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For my Mom, the MonKon

I think you’re the one I spoke to on the phone, the librarian with a voice so soft

that I went out and bought myself a cashmere sweater. Warm. Safe. You called

me three days ago to confirm my new job at the Bainbridge Public Library. The

call was meant to be short. Perfunctory. You: Mary Kay DiMarco, branch

manager. Me: Joe Goldberg, volunteer. But there was chemistry. We had a

couple laughs. That lilt in your voice got under my skin and I wanted to google

you, but I didn’t. Women can tell when a guy knows too much and I wanted to

come in cool. I’m early and you’re hot—if that’s you, is that you?—and you’re

busy with a male patron—I smell mothballs and gin—and you’re foxy but

subdued, showing off your legs as you hide them in opaque black tights, as

concealing as RIP Beck’s curtain-less windows were revealing. You raise your

voice—you want the old man to try out some Haruki Murakami—and I’m sure

of it now. You’re the one from the phone but holy shit, Mary Kay.

Are you the one for me?

I know. You’re not an object, blah, blah, blah. And I could be “projecting.” I

barely know you and I’ve been through hell. I was detained in jail for several

months of my life. I lost my son. I lost the mother of my son. It’s a miracle I’m

not dead and I want to talk to you right fucking now but I do the patient thing

and walk away. Your picture is on the wall by the lobby and the placard is final,

confirmation. You are Mary Kay DiMarco, and you’ve worked in this library for

sixteen years. You have a master’s in library science. I feel new. Powerless. But

then you clear your throat—I’m not without power—and I turn and you make a

peace sign and smile at me. Two minutes. I smile right back at you. Take your

time.

I know what you’re thinking—What a nice guy, so patient—and for the first

time in months, I’m not annoyed at having to go out of my fucking way to be

nice, and patient. See, I don’t have a choice anymore. I have to be Mr. Fucking

Good Guy. It’s the only way to ensure that I never fall prey to the American

Injustice System ever again. I bet you don’t have experience with the AIJ. I, on

the other hand, know all about the rigged game of Monopoly. I used my Get

Out of Jail Free card—thanks, rich Quinns!—but I was also naïve—fuck off, rich

Quinns—and I’ll wait for you all day long because if even one person in this

library perceived me as a threat… Well, I won’t take any chances.

I play humble for you—I do not check my phone—and I watch you scratch

your leg. You knew that you’d meet me in real life today and did you buy that

skirt for me? Possibly. You’re older than me, bolder than me, like high school

girls to my eighth-grade boy and I see you in the nineties, trotting off the cover

of Sassy magazine. You kept going, marching through time, waiting and not

waiting for a good man to come along. And here I am now—our timing is right

—and the Mothball is “reading” the Murakami and you glance at me—See what I

did there?—and I nod.

Yes, Mary Kay. I see you.

You’re Mother of Books, stiff as a robot in a French maid costume—your

skirt really is a little short—and you clutch your elbows while the Mothball

turns pages as if you work on commission, as if you need him to borrow that

book. You care about books and I belong in here with you and your pronounced

knuckles. You’re a librarian, a superior to my bookseller and the Mothball

doesn’t have to whip out a credit card, and oh that’s right. There are good things

about America. I forgot about the Dewey Fucking Decimal System and Dewey

was known to be toxic, but look what he did for this country!

The old man pats his Murakami. “Okay, doll, I’ll let you know what I think.”

You flash a smile—you like to be called “doll”—and you shudder. You feel

guilty about not feeling outraged. You’re part doll and part ladyboss and you’re a

reader. A thinker. You see both sides. You make another peace sign at me—two

more minutes—and you show off for me some more. You tell a mommy that her

baby is cute—eh, not really—and everyone loves you, don’t they? You with your

high messy bun that wants to be a ponytail and your sartorial protest against

the other librarians in their sack shirts, their slacks, you’d think they’d be put

off by you but they’re not. You say yeah a lot and I’m pretty sure that a wise

Diane Keaton mated with a daffy Diane Keaton, that they made you for me. I

adjust my pants—Gently, Joseph—and I donated one hundred thousand dollars to

this library to get this volunteer gig and you can ask the state of California or

the barista at Pegasus or my neighbor, whose dog shit on my lawn again this

morning, and they’ll all tell you the same thing.

I am a good fucking person.

It’s a matter of legal fact. I didn’t kill RIP Guinevere Beck and I didn’t kill

RIP Peach Salinger. I’ve learned my lesson. When people bring out the worst in

me, I run. RIP Beck could have run—I was no good for her either, she wasn’t

mature enough for love—but she stayed, like the hapless, underwritten, self-

destructive female in a horror movie that she was and I was no better. I should

have cut the cord with her the day I met RIP Peach. I should have dumped Love

when I met her sociopath brother.

A teenage girl zooms into the library and she bumps into me and knocks me

back into the present—no apology—and she’s fast as a meerkat and you bark at

her. “No Columbine, Nomi. I mean it.”

Ah, so the Meerkat is your daughter and her glasses are too small for her face

and she probably wears them because you told her they’re no good. She’s

defiant. More like a feisty toddler than a surly teenager and she lugs a big white

copy of Columbine out of her backpack. She flips you the bird and you flip her

the bird and your family is fun. Is there a ring on your finger?

No, Mary Kay. There isn’t.

You reach for the Meerkat’s Columbine and she storms outside and you follow

her out the door—it’s an unplanned intermission—and I remember what you

told me on our phone call.

Your mom was a Mary Kay lady, cutthroat and competitive. You grew up on

the floors of various living rooms in Phoenix playing with Barbie dolls, watching

her coax women with cheating husbands into buying lipstick that might incite

their dirtbag husbands to stay home. As if lipstick can save a marriage. Your

mother was good at her job, she drove a pink Cadillac, but then your parents

split. You and your mother moved to Bainbridge and she did a one-eighty,

started selling Patagonia instead of Pan-Cake makeup. You said she passed away

three years ago and then you took a deep breath and said, “Okay, that was TMI.”

But it wasn’t too much, not at all, and you told me more: Your favorite place

on the island is Fort Ward and you like the bunkers and you mentioned graffiti.

God kills everyone. I told you that’s true and you wanted to know where I’m from

and I told you that I grew up in New York and you liked that and I told you I

did time in L.A. and you thought I was being facetious and who was I to correct

you?

The door opens and now you’re back. In the flesh and the skirt. Whatever

you said to your Meerkat pissed her off and she grabs a chair and moves it so

that it faces a wall and finally you come to me, warm and soft as the cashmere

on my chest. “Sorry for all the drama,” you say, as if you didn’t want me to see

everything. “You’re Joe, yeah? I think we spoke on the phone.”

You don’t think. You know. Yeah. But you didn’t know you’d want to tear my

clothes off and you shake my hand, skin on skin, and I breathe you in—you

smell like Florida—and the power inside of my body is restored. Zing.

You look at me now. “Can I have my hand back?”

I held on too long. “Sorry.”

“Oh no,” you say, and you lean in, closer as in the movie Closer. “I’m the one

who’s sorry. I ate an orange outside and my hands are a little sticky.”

I sniff my palm and I lean in. “Are you sure it wasn’t a tangerine?”

You laugh at my joke and smile. “Let’s not tell the others.”

Already it’s us against them and I ask if you finished the Lisa Taddeo—I am a

good guy and good guys remember the shit the girl said on the phone—and yes

you did finish and you loved it and I ask you if I can ask you about your

daughter and her Columbine and you blush. “Yeah,” you say. Yeah. “Well, as you

saw… she’s a little obsessed with Dylan Klebold.”

“The school shooter?”

“Oh God, no,” you say. “See, according to my daughter, he was a poet, which

is why it’s okay for her to write her college essay about him…”

“Okay, that’s a bad idea.”

“Obviously. I say that and she calls me a ‘hypocrite’ because I got in trouble

for writing about Ann Petry instead of Jane Austen when I was her age…” You

like me so much you are name-dropping. “I can’t remember…” Yes you can. “Did

you say if you have kids?”

Stephen King doesn’t have to murder people to describe death and you don’t

have to have kids to understand being a parent and technically I have a kid, but

I don’t “have” him. I don’t get to wear him like all the khaki fucking dads on this

rock. I shake my head no and your eyes sparkle. You hope I’m free and you want

us to have things in common so I steer us back to books. “Also, I love Ann Petry.

The Street is one of my all-time favorite books.”

You’re supposed to be impressed but a lot of book people know The Street

and you’re a fox. Reserved. I double down and tell you that I wish more people

would read The Narrows and that gets a smile—fuck yes—but we’re in the

workplace so you put your hands on your keypad. You furrow your brow. No

Botox for you. “Huh.” Something bumped you on the computer and do you

know about me? Did they flag me?

Play it cool, Joe. Exonerated. Innocent. “Am I fired already?”

“Well, no, but I do see an inconsistency in your file…”

You don’t know about the money I donated to this library because I insisted

on anonymity and the woman on the board swore that she would spare me the

nuisance of a background check, but did she lie to me? Did you find Dr. Nicky’s

conspiracy theory blog? Did the lady on the board realize I’m that Joe Goldberg?

Did she hear about me on some murder-obsessed woman’s fucking podcast?

You wave me over and the inconsistency is my list of favorite authors—phew

—and you tsk-tsk in a whisper. “I don’t see Debbie Macomber on this list, Mr.

Goldberg.”

I blush. The other day on the phone I told you that I got the idea to move to

the Pacific Northwest from Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Fucking Cove books and

you laughed—Really?—and I stood my soft, picket fenced-in ground. I’m not a

dictator. I didn’t command you to read one of her books. But I did say that

Debbie helped me, that reading about pious, justice-seeking Judge Olivia

Lockhart and her local newsie boyfriend Jack restored my faith in our world.

You did say you’d check ’em out but that’s what all people say when you

recommend a book or a fucking TV show and now here you are, winking at me.

You wink at me. Your hair is red and yellow. Your hair is fire. “Don’t fret,

Joe. I’ll eat the beef and you eat the broccoli. No one has to know.”

“Ah,” I say, because the beef and the broccoli are a reference to the show.

“Sounds like someone went to Cedar Cove to check it out.”

Your fingertips hit the keypad and the keypad is my heart. “Well I told you I

would…” You’re a woman of your word. “And you were right…” BINGO. “It is a

nice ‘antidote to the hellspace reality of the world right now’…” That’s me.

You’re quoting me. “All the bicycles and the fight for equity, it kinda lowers

your blood pressure.”

On you go about the pros and cons of escapism—you learned my language

and you want me to know it—you are sexy, confident—and I forgot about

sexual tension. Beginnings. “Well,” I say. “Maybe we can start a fan club.”

“Yeah…” you say. “But first you’ll have to tell me what got you into it…”

You women always want to know about the past but the past is over. Gone. I

can’t fucking tell you that Cedar Cove helped me survive my time in prison. I

won’t tell you that it was my Mayberry-scented salve while I was wrongly

incarcerated and I shouldn’t have to spill the details. We all go through periods

when we feel trapped, caged. It doesn’t matter where you suffer. I shrug.

“There’s no big story…” Ha! “A few months ago, I hit a rough patch…” Fact: The

best prison reads are “beach reads.” “Debbie was there for me…”… when Love

Quinn wasn’t.

You don’t badger me for details—I knew you were smart—and say you know

the feeling and you and I are the same, sensitive. “Well, I don’t want to bring you

down, but I must warn you, Joe…” You want to protect me. “This isn’t Cedar

Cove, not by a long shot.”

I like your spunk—you want to spar—and I tilt my head toward the empty

table where you stood with that old man. “Tell that to the Mothball who just

went home with the Murakami you suggested. Now that was very Cedar Cove.”

You know I’m right and you try to smirk but your smirk is a smile. “We’ll see

how you feel after you’ve made it through a couple winters.” You blush. “What’s

in the bag?”

I give you my best smile, the one I never thought I’d use again. “Lunch,” I say.

“And unlike Judge Olivia Lockhart, I brought a ton of food. You can eat the

broccoli and the beef.”

I said that out loud—FUCK YOU, RUSTY BRAIN—and you get to hide in

your computer while I stand here being the guy who just told you that you can

eat my beef.

But you don’t torture me for long. “Okay,” you say. “The computer’s acting

up. We’ll take care of your badge later.”

The computer has some fucking nerve or maybe you’re testing me. You’re

leading me toward the break room and you ask if I went to Sawan or Sawadty.

When I say Sawan your Meerkat looks up from her Columbine and makes a barf

signal. “Eew. That’s so gross.”

No, kid, being rude is gross. She raves about Sawadty and you side with her

and I don’t speak your language. Not right now. You put a hand on my back—

nice—and then you put a hand on the Meerkat’s shoulder—you’re bringing us

together—and you tell me that I have a lot to learn about Bainbridge. “Nomi’s

extreme, but there are two kinds of people here, Joe. There are those who go to

Sawan and those of us who go to Sawadty.”

You fold your arms and are you really that petty? “Okay,” I say. “But doesn’t

the same family own both restaurants?”

The Meerkat groans and puts on her headphones—rude again—and you wave

me into the kitchen. “Well, yeah,” you say. “But the food’s a little different at

both of them.” You open the fridge and I stash my lunch and you’re being

irrational but you know it. “Oh come on. Isn’t this small-town quirk what you

wanted when you moved here?”

“Holy shit,” I say. “I live here.”

You rest your hands on my shoulders and it’s like you’ve never been to a

sexual harassment seminar. “Don’t worry, Joe. Seattle is only thirty-five minutes

away.”

I want to kiss you and you take your hands away and we leave the break

room and I tell you that I didn’t move here to take the ferry to the city. You

peer at me. “Why did you move here? Seriously. New York… L.A.… Bainbridge…

I’m genuinely curious.”

You are testing me. Demanding more of me. “Well, I joke about Cedar Cove…”

“Yeah you do…”

“But I guess it just felt right to me. New York used to be like a Richard

Scarry book.”

“Love him.”

“But it lost that Scarry feeling. Maybe it was Citi Bikes…” Or all those dead

girls. “L.A. is just somewhere I went because that’s what people do. They go

from New York to L.A.” It’s been so long since anyone wanted to know me and

you bring me home and away all at once. “Hey, do you remember those black-

and-white pictures of Kurt Cobain and his buddies in the meadow? Photos from

the early days, before Dave Grohl was in Nirvana?”

You nod. You think you do, yeah.

“Well, it just hit me. My mom had that picture up on the fridge when I was a

kid. It looked like heaven to me, the tall grass…”

You nod. “Come on,” you say. “The best part of this place is downstairs.”

You stop short in Cookbooks. Someone’s texting you and you’re writing back

and I can’t see who it is and you look at me. “Are you on Instagram?”

“Yep, are you?”

It’s just so fucking easy, Mary Kay. I follow you and you follow me and you

are already liking my book posts—heart, heart, heart—and I like your picture of

you and Nomi on the ferry, the one with the best fucking caption in the world:

Gilmore Girls. It’s Instagram official. You’re single.

You lead the way to the stairs and tease me about my account. “Don’t get me

wrong… I love books too, but your life strikes me as a little off balance.”

“And what would you suggest, Ms. ‘Gilmore Girl’? Should I post my beef and

broccoli?”

You turn red. “Oh,” you say. “That’s Nomi’s little joke. I got pregnant in

college, not high school.”

You say that like the father is a sperm donor with no name. “I’ve never seen

that show.”

“You’d like it,” you say. “I used it to get my kid to think of reading as cool.”

I know what you’re thinking. You wish there was more of me on my fucking

“feed” because here I am, seeing your whole life, pictures of you and your best

friend, Melanda, at various wineries, you and your Meerkat off being

#GilmoreGirls. You don’t get to learn much about me and it’s not fair. But life

isn’t fair and I won’t bore you by humble-bragging about being a “private

person.” I put my phone away and tell you that I had Corn Pops for breakfast.

You laugh—yes—you leave Instagram—yay!—and I feed you the right way,

mouth to ear. I tell you about my home on the water in Winslow and you roll

up your sleeves a little more. “We’re practically neighbors,” you say. “I’m around

the corner in Wesley Landing.”

There’s no way you’re this way with all the volunteers and we make it

downstairs and you graze my arm and I see what you see. A Red Bed. Built into

the wall.

Your voice is low. Hushed. There are children present. “How good is that?”

“Oh, that’s a good Red Bed right there.”

“That’s what I call it too. And I know it’s smaller than the green one…” The

green one is too green, same green as RIP Beck’s pillow. “But I like the Red one.

Plus it has the aquarium…” Like the aquarium in Closer, and you scratch an itch

that isn’t there because you want to throw me down on that Red Bed right now

but you can’t. “My library was nothing like this when I was a kid, I mean these

kids have it made, right?”

That’s why I wanted to raise my son on this island and I nod. “My library

barely had chairs.”

There was a little tremor in my voice—stop vague-booking out loud about

your shitty childhood, Joe—and you lean in closer as in Closer. “It’s even better

at night.”

I don’t know what to say to that and it’s too good with you, too much, like

ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and you feel it too and you point at a

closet. “Alas, some kid peed on it and the janitor’s out sick. You mind getting

your hands dirty?”

“Not at all.”

Two minutes later I am scrubbing urine out of our Red Bed and you are

trying not to watch but you want to watch. You like me and how could you not?

I do my dirty work with a smile on my face and I moved here because I thought

it would be easier to be a good person around other good people. I moved here

because the murder rate is low, as in not a single fucking murder in over twenty

years. The crime is so nonexistent that there are not one but two articles in the

Bainbridge Islander about a couple of architects who stole a sandwich board from

another architect and the population skews older and the Red Bed is good as

new and I put my cleaning supplies away and you’re gone.

I go upstairs to find you and you knock on the glass wall of your office—come

on in—and you want me in your den and I like it in your den. I wave hello to

your posters—RIP Whitney Houston and Eddie Vedder—and you offer me a

seat and your phone rings and I never thought I’d feel this way again, but then, I

never thought Love Quinn would kidnap my child and pay me four million

dollars to walk away. If unspeakably bad things are possible, then unspeakably

good things are too.

You hang up the phone and smile. “So, where were we?”

“You were just about to tell me your favorite Whitney Houston song.”

“Well, that hasn’t changed since I was kid. ‘How Will I Know.’ ”

You gulp. I gulp. “I like the Lemonheads cover of that song.”

You try not to stare at me and you smile. “I didn’t know that existed. I’ll have

to check it out.”

“Oh yeah. It’s good. The Lemonheads.”

You lick your lips and mimic me—“The Lemonheads”—and I want to lick

your Lemonhead on the Red Bed and I point at the drawing on your wall of a

little storefront. “Did your daughter do that?”

“Oh no,” you say. “And now that you point it out… I should have something

she made up here. But yeah, I made that when I was little. I wanted to have my

own bookstore.”

Of course you did and I’m a rich man. I can help you make your dream come

true. “Did this bookstore have a name?”

“Look closer,” you say. “It’s right there in the corner… Empathy Bordello.”

I smile. “Bordello, eh?”

You touch pearls that aren’t there. You feel it too and your phone rings. You

say you have to take this and I ask if I should go and you want me to stay. You

pick up the phone and your voice changes, high as a kindergarten teacher in a

well-funded school district. “Howie! How are you, honey, and what can we do

for you?”

Howie tells you what he wants and you point at a book of poems and I pick

up the William Carlos Williams and hand it over and you lick your finger—you

didn’t really need to do that—and your voice changes again. You murmur a

poem to Howie and your voice is melted ice cream and then you close the book

and hang up the phone and I laugh. “I have so many questions.”

“I know,” you say. “So that was Howie Okin…” You said his whole name. Do

you like him too? “He’s the sweetest older man…” Nope! He’s a Mothball. “And

he’s in hell right now…” No one knows hell more than me. “His wife passed away

and his son moved away…” My son was born fourteen months and eight days

ago and I haven’t even met him. And he’s not just my son. He’s my savior.

“That’s so sad,” I say, as if my story isn’t sadder. I’m the victim, Mary Kay.

Love Quinn’s family dipped into their coffers to pay my defense attorneys

because Love was pregnant with my son. I thought I was lucky to have money

on my side. I thought I was going to be a dad. I learned to play guitar in that

fucking prison and I rewrote the lyrics to “My Sweet Lord”—Hare Forty,

Hallelujah—and I told Love that I wanted our family to move to Bainbridge, to

real-life Cedar Cove. I went online and found us the perfect home, complete with

a fucking guesthouse for her parents, even though they never let me forget that

they were footing the bill, as if they had to mortgage a fucking beach house.

Fact check: They didn’t.

Your phone rings. And it’s Howie again. And now he’s crying. You read him

another poem and I look down at my phone. A picture I saved. My son on day

one. Wet and slick. A little risk taker. A rascal. I didn’t take this picture. I

wasn’t there when he emerged from Love’s “geriatric” womb—fuck you, doctors

—and I am a bad dad.

Absentee. Invisible. Out of the picture and not because I’m taking the

picture.

Love called two days later. I named him Forty. He looks just like my brother.

I went along with it. Fawning. I love it, Love. I can’t wait to see you and Forty.

Nine days later. My lawyers got me out of jail. Charges dropped. The parking

lot. Fresh hot stale air. The song in my head. Hare Forty, Hallelujah. I was

somebody’s father. Daddy. I got into a town car. My lawyers all around me. We

need to stop by the firm for you to sign a few papers. Next stop, the parking

structure of a concrete fortress in Culver Fucking City. No sun underground.

No son in my arms, not yet. Just a few papers. We rode the elevator to the

twenty-fourth floor of the building. Just a few papers, won’t take long. The

conference room was wide and indifferent. They closed the door even though

the floor was empty. There was a goon in the corner. Thick torso. Navy blazer.

Just a few papers. And then I learned what I should have known all along. My

lawyers weren’t mine. Love’s family wrote the checks. The mercenary attorneys

worked for them, not me. Just a few papers. No. They were injustice papers.

The Quinns offered me four million dollars to go away.

Bequeath all access to the child. No contact. No stalking. No visitation.

The Quinns are happy to pay for your dream house on Bainbridge Island.

I screamed. There is no dream without my fucking son.

I threw an iPad. It bounced and it didn’t break and the lawyers didn’t

scream. Love Quinn feels that this is in the best interest of the child. I wouldn’t give

up my flesh and blood but the goon put his gun on the table. A private dancer, a

dancer for money can get away with murder on the twenty-fourth floor of a law

firm in Culver Fucking City. They could kill me. They would kill me. But I

couldn’t die. I’m a father. So I signed. I took the money and they took my son

and you spin around in your chair. You grab a notepad. You scribble: You okay?

I think I smile. I try to anyway. But you look sad. You scribble again.

Howie is the nicest man. I just feel terrible.

I nod. I understand. I was a nice man, too. Stupid. Locked up in jail

mainlining Cedar Cove, trying to stay positive. I believed Love when she said

we’d move up here together, as a family. Ha!

Again you scribble: The world can be so unfair. I can’t get over his son.

You go back to consoling Howie Okin and I’m not a monster. I feel for the

guy. But Howie raised his asshole son. I’ve never seen my little Forty. Not in real

life. I only see him on Instagram. Love is a real sicko, yes. She kidnapped my son

but she didn’t block me. Chills every time I think about it. I lower the volume

on my phone and open Love’s live story and I watch my boy hit himself on the

head with a shovel. His mother laughs as if it’s funny—it isn’t—and Instagram is

too little—I can’t smell him, can’t hold him—and it’s too big—he’s alive. He’s

doing this right now.

I make it stop. I close the app. But it doesn’t stop, not really.

I became a dad before he was born. I memorized Shel Silverstein poems and I

still know them by heart even though I don’t get to read them aloud to my son

and I miss my son and Silverstein’s boa chokes me out, that boa slithers in my

skin, in my brain, a constant reminder of what I lost, what I sold, technically,

and it is wrong, so wrong, it is up to my neck and I can’t live like this and you

hang up your phone you look at me and gasp. “Joe, are you… do you need a

tissue?”

I didn’t mean to cry—it was allergies, it was William Carlos Williams, it was

the saga of poor Howie Okin—and you hand me a tissue. “It’s so comforting

that you get it. I know it’s not my ‘job’ to read poems when some of these

patrons have a bad day but it’s a library. It’s an honor to be in here and we can

do so much and I just…”

“Sometimes we all need a poem.”

You smile at me. For me. Because of me. “I have a good feeling about you.”

You’re moved because I’m moved—you think I was crying for Howie—and

you welcome me aboard and we shake hands—skin on skin—and I make a

promise in my head. I’m gonna be your man, Mary Kay. I’m gonna be the man

you think I am, the guy who has empathy for Howie, for my evil baby mama, for

everyone on this terrible fucking planet. I won’t kill anyone who gets in our

way, even though, well… never mind.

You laugh. “Can I have my hand back, please?”

I give you your hand and I walk out of your office and I want to kick down

the shelves and tear up all the pages because I don’t need to read any fucking

books anymore! Now I know what all the poets were talking about. I’m doing it,

Mary Kay.

I’m carrying your heart in my heart.

I lost my son. I lost my family. But maybe bad things really do happen for a

reason. All those toxic women won me over and fucked me over because they

were part of a larger plan to push me onto this rock, into this library.

I see you in your office, on the phone again, twirling the phone cord. You

look different, too. You already love me, too, maybe, and you deserve it, Mary

Kay. You waited a long time. You gave birth. You give poems to Howie and you

never got to open your bookstore—we’ll get there—and you pushed your

Murakami on that Mothball, as if that Mothball could ever appreciate being all

but sucked inside. You’ve spent your life in your office, looking up at the posters

you held onto since high school, the pop star and the rock star. Life never lived

up to the lyrics of their songs, to the passion, but I’m here now. I have a good

feeling about you.

We’re the same but different. If I’d had a kid when I was young, I would have

been like you. Responsible. Patient. Sixteen years in one fucking job on one

fucking island. And you’d fight to make things better if you were so alone like

me and this morning, we both got out of bed. We both felt alive. I put on my

brand-new sweater and you put on that blue bra and your tights, your little

skirt. You liked me on the phone. Maybe you rubbed one out while Cedar Cove

was muted on your TV and am I blushing? I think so. I pick up my badge and

my lanyard at the front desk. I like my picture. I never looked better. Never felt

better.

I clip the badge to the lanyard—how satisfying, when life makes sense, when

things click, you and me, beef and broccoli, the badge and the lanyard—and my

heart beats a little faster and then it beats a little slower. I’m not a sonless father

anymore. I have purpose. You did this to me. You gave this to me. You placed a

special order and here I am, tagged. Lanyard official. And I’m not afraid that I’m

getting ahead of myself. I want to fall for you. I’ve had it rough, yeah, but you’ve

had to hold it together for a child. I’m your long overdue book, the one you

never thought was coming. I took a while to get here and I got banged up along

the way, but good things only come to people like us, Mary Kay, people willing

to wait and suffer and bide the time staring at the stars on the walls, the bare

concrete blocks in the cell. I pull my lanyard down over my head and it feels like

it was made for me, because it was, even though it wasn’t. Perfect.

Yesterday I overheard two Mothballs call us lovebirds and today we’re in our

usual lunch spot outside on the love seat in the Japanese garden. We eat lunch

here every fucking day and right now you are laughing, because we’re always

laughing, because this is it, Mary Kay. You’re the one.

“No,” you say. “Tell me you did not really steal Nancy’s newspaper.”

Nancy is my fecal-eyed neighbor and you went to high school with Nancy.

You don’t like her but you’re friends with her—women—and I tell you that I had

to steal her newspaper because she cut me in line at our local coffeehouse,

Pegasus. You nod. “I guess that’s karma.”

“You know what they say, Mary Kay. Be the change you want to see in the

world.”

You laugh again and you are thrilled that someone is finally standing up to

Nancy and you still can’t believe I live next door to her, that I live right around

the corner from you. You chew on your beef—we eat beef and broccoli every day

—and you close your eyes and raise a finger. You need time—this is the most

serious part of our lunch—and I count down ten seconds and I make a buzzer

noise. “Well, Ms. DiMarco? Sawan or Sawadty?”

You tilt your head like a food critic. “Sawan. Has to be Sawan.”

You failed again and I make another buzzer noise and you are feisty and you

tell me that you will fucking win one of these days and I smile. “I think we both

won, Mary Kay.”

You know I’m not talking about a stupid Thai food taste test and you wipe a

happy tear off your cheek. “Oh, Joe, you kill me. You do.”

You say things like that to me every day and we should be naked on the Red

Bed by now. We’re getting there. Your cheeks are rosy and you already gave me

a promotion. I am the Fiction Specialist and I built a new section in the library

called “The Quiet Ones” where we feature books like Ann Petry’s The Narrows,

lesser-known works by famous authors. You said it’s nice to see books find new

eyes and you knew I was watching you shake your ass when you walked away.

You’re glued to me in the library, every chance you get, and you’re glued to me

here, on the love seat, warning me that Fecal Eyes might rat me out on

Nextdoor.

“Oh come on,” I say. “I stole a newspaper. I didn’t steal her dog. And they’re

like everyone here. Lights out by ten P.M.”

“You come on,” you sass. “You love being the rebel night owl. I bet you’re up

all night chain-smoking and reading Bukowski.”

I like it when you tease me and I smile. “Now that you mention it, Bukowski

might be the way to get Nomi off her Columbine kick.”

“That’s a great idea, maybe I’ll start with Women…” You always appreciate my

ideas—I love your brain—and I ask you what you think Bukowski would have

thought of my fecal-eyed neighbor and you laugh-choke on your beef, my beef,

and you hold your stomach—it hurts lately, what with the butterflies, the

private jokes. I pat you on the back—I care—and you sip your water and take a

deep breath. “Thank you,” you say. “Thought I was gonna faint.”

I want to hold your hand but I can’t do that. Not yet. You pick up your

phone—no—and your shoulders slouch and I know your body language. I can

tell when the Meerkat is texting—you sit up a little straighter—and I can tell

when it’s not the Meerkat, like now. I’ve done my homework, Mary Kay—it’s

amazing how easy it is to get to know a woman when she follows you back

online!—and I know about the people in your life, in your phone.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” you say. “Sorry, it’s just my friend Seamus. This will just take a sec.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Take your time.”

I know, Mary Kay. You have a “life” here and it’s mostly about your daughter,

but you also have your friends, one of whom is Seamus Fucking Cooley. You

went to high school with him—yawn—and he owns a hardware store.

Correction: He inherited the store from his parents. Whenever he texts, he’s

whining about some twenty-two-year-old girl who’s fucking with his head—ha!

—and you are compassionate. You always say that he’s sensitive because he used

to be picked on about being short—I bet the shithead bullies used to call him

Shortus—and I always bite my tongue—Look at Tom Fucking Cruise!—and

you’re still texting.

“Sorry,” you say. “I know this is rude.”

“Not at all.”

Making you feel better makes me feel better. But it’s not easy, Mary Kay.

Every time I ask you to get coffee or invite you to pop over you tell me you can’t

because of Nomi, because of your friends. I know that you want me—your skirts

are shorter every day, your Murakami is hot for me—and I come in early and I

stay after my shift ends. You can’t get enough of me and you’re spoiled because

I’m here almost every day. You never send me home and when you joke about

the two of us loitering in the parking lot I tell you that we’re lingering. You like

that. Plus, you like all my fucking pictures.

@LadyMaryKay liked your photo.

@LadyMaryKay WANTS TO FUCK YOU AND SHE IS PICKY AND PRIVATE

AND PATIENT AND SHE FINALLY FOUND A GOOD MAN AND THAT’S YOU

JOE. YOU’RE THE ONE. BE PATIENT. SHE’S A MOM. SHE’S YOUR BOSS. SHE

COULD GET FIRED FOR HITTING ON YOU!

Finally, you shove your phone into your pocket. “Oof, I think I need a drink.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yeah,” you say. “I think I told you he has this cabin in the mountains…”

You told me about his fucking cabin and I’m not impressed. I’ve seen his

Instagram. He doesn’t like to read and he bought his biceps at CrossFit. “I think

so, yeah.”

“Well, he brought this girl up there and she spent the whole trip complaining

about the lack of Wi-Fi. And then she bailed on him.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah,” you say. “And I know it sounds bad, this same old story of a middle-

aged guy going for twenty-two-year-old girls, but”—there is no but, it’s just plain

bad—“you know how it is. He’s like a brother to me. He’s insecure…” No. He’s

just a man. “And I feel for him. He does so much for this island. He’s a saint,

truly. He donates books constantly…” ONE HUNDRED GRAND, HONEY.

“He’s like our own Giving Tree…”

No man is an island or a tree but I smile. “I got that impression,” I say. “I saw

signs for his Cooley 5K and the Cooley ‘street cleaning task force.’ But maybe

instead of doing so much for others…” God, this hurts. “Maybe he should be in

that cabin clearing his head.”

“Yeah,” you say. Yeah. “And that’s probably the right move because he truly

does have the worst luck with women.”

Sorry, Mary Kay, but if you knew about my exes… “He’s lucky he has you.”

You blush. You’re quiet, too quiet, and you don’t want this fucking man, do

you? No. If you wanted him, you would have him because look at you. You sigh.

Sighs are signs of guilt and okay. He wants you and you don’t want him—you

want me—and you shrug. “I don’t know about that. It’s just second nature for

me, you know, helping people, being there…”

We are the same, Mary Kay. We just have different styles. “I can relate.”

We’re quiet again, closer now than we were an hour ago. My whole “Mr.

Goody Two-shoes” plan isn’t just about me anymore. It’s about us being good

together. I swore I won’t ever hurt anyone for you, not even the guy who owns

the hardware store where the female staffers swan around in tight jeans and

tight shirts bearing the Cooley name. I’m kind like you. I’m good like you. I

gulp. I go for it. “Maybe we could get a drink later…”

You put your hand on your shirt. Deep V-neck sweater today, deep for a

librarian who bends over a lot. Say yes. “I wish,” you say, as you stand. “But I

have girls’ night and I should probably get back inside.”

I stand because I have to stand. “No pressure,” I say. “Just throwing it out

there.”

We’re lingering as if we can’t bear to go inside and time is slowing down the

way it does before a first kiss and we do need to kiss. You should kiss me or I

should kiss you and it’s fall and you’re falling in love with me and I’ve never felt

less alone in my life than I do when I’m with you. There’s an invisible string

pulling our bodies together but you walk to the door. “Hey, if I don’t see you,

have a good weekend!”

Six hours later, and I am NOT HAVING A GOOD FUCKING WEEKEND,

MARY KAY. I want to spend my downtime with you and okay. You didn’t lie

to me. You’re not out with Seamus—he’s at a dive bar watching a soccer game

because people here like soccer—but you’re at Eleven Winery with Melanda.

She’s your “bestie” and she’s @MelandaMatriarchy on Instagram—oy—and

she celebrated Gloria Steinem’s birthday by posting a picture of… Melanda. This

woman is an English teacher, she’s your daughter’s teacher, constantly harassing

your Meerkat to stop romanticizing Dylan Klebold in the comments—

Boundaries, anyone?—but you see the best in people. Melanda was the first

friend you made in Bainbridge and she “saved your life” in high school, so when

she issues Instagram mandates to BELIEVE ALL WOMEN—as in, the mandate

is on a T-shirt stretched over her unnecessarily big boobs—well, you like every

fucking one of them.

And you do this even though she doesn’t like all of your pictures—you are the

bigger person, just like me—and when she wants to go to Eleven Winery and

bitch about her OkCupid dates—generally this is every Tuesday and every

Friday—you go.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that I should be with you, that Melanda should

be with Shortus. But they’re two sides of the same coin. She likes to hate men

because she’s too guarded to find real love—your words, not mine—and this

man-boy wants a chick to suck on his Shortus. And then my phone buzzes. It’s

you.

You: How’s your night?

Me: Hanging in there. How’s girls’ night?

You: You mean women’s night.

This is our first text—YES!—and I can tell you’re a little drunk. I want to

pound my chest and pump my fist because I’ve been waiting for you to reach

out to me and I haven’t reached out to you because I have to be paranoid. I

know how it works in this antiromantic world. I couldn’t be the one to hit you

up on your personal phone because the Injustice System could take my innocent

gesture and frame me as a fucking “stalker.” This is life without a Get Out of Jail

Free card but it turns out, life is good. You did it, Mary Kay! You crossed the line

and texted me after hours and the library is closed but you are open. And thank

God I dragged my ass to Isla Bonita tonight—another win!—because now you’re

gonna see that I’m not sitting at home pining for you. I’m just like you, out on

the town with my friends—the other guys at this bar would appear to be my

“friends” on security camera footage—and now I get to make you sick with

FOMOOM—fear of missing out on me.

Me: Well I’m at BOYS’ night. Beer and nachos and soccer at Isla.

You take a beat. It’s killing you to realize that I’m on Winslow Way too, 240

feet away. Come on, Mary Kay. Spill that wine and run to me.

You: You make me laugh.

Me: Sometimes boys and women drink at the same bar.

You: Melanda hates sports bars. Long story. Bartender was rude to her once.

I bet every bartender in the state was rude to Melanda but then, it can’t be

easy being Melanda. I snap a picture of the bumper stickers behind the bar—MY

BARTENDER CAN BEAT UP YOUR THERAPIST and I DON’T HAVE AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM.

YOU’RE JUST AN ASSHOLE—and I send it to you and then I write to you.

Me: Tell your friend Melanda that I get it.

You: I love you.

Me. Numb. Lovestruck. Speechless. Cloud 9000. I stare at my phone, at the

dots that tell me there’s more to come and then boom.

You: Typo. I meant I love your picture. Sloppy fingers. lol sorry just… yeah… wine.

My heart is pounding and you love me. You said it. Everyone around me is

oblivious, but Van Morrison is egging us on from the speakers—this seems like a

brand-new night and this feels like a brand-new night—and what the fuck am I

doing?

You want me. I want you. Fuck it.

I’m outside, en route to Eleven Winery, closer as in Closer, but then I stop

short.

Yes, you told me where you are but you didn’t invite me to join you. And

let’s say I did interrupt your women’s night. Is this really the way for us to start

our love story? Deep down, I know that good guy island etiquette requires that I

give you your fucking “space.” The walls of Eleven are thin and I hear laughter in

“your bar.” You’re not just with your best friend. You know a lot of flannel-

vested townies inside and I want to rescue you from that noisy tedium that can’t

possibly compare to our lovebird lunches in the garden.

But I can’t save you, Mary Kay. Tonight we made progress—you texted me,

you started it—and I want that to be what you think about when you wake up

tomorrow. It’s not easy, but I walk into the alley, away from the sound of your

voice. Before I get home, I’m smiling again because hey, this was still a big night

for us. You had all those people to talk to, your best fucking friend, but that

wasn’t enough for you, was it? You picked up your phone and texted me. Rude.

Obsessed. Sassy. And of course you couldn’t help it.

After all, you love me.

And you can tell me that you didn’t mean it that way. You can point to the

fact that you were drinking. You can say that you were sloppy. But anyone with

a phone knows that there are very few actual mistakes when it comes to the

things we put in writing, especially after a few drinks. You said it and on some

level, you meant it and your words are mine now, glowing in the dark in my

phone.

I sleep well for a change, as if your love is already working its magic on me.

Everybody working for the weekend can bite me. I hate the weekends on this

island, the flabby, brunchy vats of time where families and couples convene and

revel in their togetherness with no regard for me, alone, missing you so much

that I walk to the Town & Country grocery store—your grocery store—just

hoping to bump into you at some point this weekend while your I-Love-You is

still fresh, still new.

Sadly, we miss each other on Saturday and again on Sunday. But fuck you,

weekend warriors, because Monday’s finally come. I look good even though I

didn’t sleep last night—There’s no doubt, I’m in deep—and I pull a bright orange

sweater over my head. This will make it easier for you to spot me in the stacks

and I check Instagram. Last night, I posted some yearning Richard Yates. Did

you touch the white empty heart beneath my Young Hearts Crying and turn it

red?

No, you didn’t. But that’s okay.

@LadyMaryKay did not like your photo because she likes YOU, Joe.

I lock my door even though the Mothballs tell me I don’t have to lock my

door and I walk by the movie theater on Madison—I want to go down on you in

the dark—and I go to Love’s Instagram and watch my son tear up Good Night,

Los Angeles. I know better than to walk into Love’s online family museum when I

need to be at my best and I see your Subaru in the parking lot—you’re here!—

and I quicken my pace and then I slow down—Gently, Joseph—and I walk inside

but you’re not on the floor and you’re not in your den. Grrr. I shuffle off to the

break room, where a married old Mothball tells me about his wife harping on

him to take Advil for his lower back pain and I want that to be us in thirty

years, but that will never be us if we don’t seal the fucking deal.

I fill Dolly Carton and push her into the stacks and boom. It’s you. You put

your hands on Dolly and your eyes on me. “Hey.”

I fight the urge to do what you want me to do, to grab you right here, right

now. “Hey.”

“Do you want to go get lunch in town or are you attached to your Cedar Cove

special?”

YES I WANT TO GO TO LUNCH. “Sure.”

Your cheeks are Red Bed red and you want to eat food with me and there is

a zipper in the center of your skirt and it’s a skirt I’ve never seen, a skirt you

broke out today, for me, for our lunch date. You fiddle with the zipper. You

want me to fiddle with it. “You wanna go now?”

We are putting on our jackets and we are lovebirds in a movie, strolling on

Madison Avenue under a classical score. You want to know if Fecal Eyes

introduced herself yet and I tell you she didn’t and you sigh. “Unbelievable,” you

say. “See, if this were Cedar Cove, Nancy and her husband would have baked you

a pie by now.”

I don’t want a pity party so I ask about your weekend—code for: remember

when you told me you love me?—and you tell me that you and the Meerkat went to

Seattle. I am bright, interested. “That sounds fun. What’d you do?”

“Oh you know how it is. She’s at that age where she walks ten feet ahead of

me and if I want Italian, she wants Chinese and if I say that sounds good…”

“She wants Italian.”

“And she was freezing, she refused to bring a jacket. We popped by to visit

some old friends who have a guitar store, they’re like family…” Your voice trails

off. And you shrug. “And lunch was just Danishes on the ferry. Another proud

mom moment, you know?” You laugh. “So, Joe, did you… do you want kids?”

It’s a trick question. Nomi’s a senior in high school and if I say I want kids

and you don’t want more kids then you have a reason to push me away. But if I

say I don’t want kids, then you might think I don’t want to be a stepfather. “I’ve

always felt like, if it happens, it happens.”

“It’s the difference between men and women. For all you know, some kid

could show up and knock on your door, 23andMe style, like ‘Hi, Dad!’ ”

If only you knew, and I smile. “What about you? Do you want more kids?”

“Well… Nomi was the surprise of my life, you know? Lately, it’s hitting me

that there’s this whole new chapter ahead. I don’t know about another kid, but

opening a bookshop, that I can see.” Your voice trails off—you’re picturing us in

our Bordello—and you dig your hands into your pockets. “So,” you say, your

voice shaky with first-date nerves. “How was the rest of guys’ night?”

I like this new side of you, Mary Kay. Jealous. Frisky. And I am sarcastic. “Oh

you know, beer… nachos… babes.”

“Ah, so does that mean you met someone?”

God, you have it bad for me and I smile. “Well, I thought I did…” I have to

tease you a little. “But then this woman I work with texted me and I guess I

kinda blew it.”

You know that you are this woman and you shrug, slightly demure, and it’s a

reminder that as much as we are soulmates, we don’t know each other, not like

this, on a sidewalk in motion. “Oh come on,” I say. “You know I’m kidding… I

don’t go out on the prowl at bars and I’m certainly never, you know, looking for

babes…” RIP Beck walked into my bookstore same way you happen to work at

my library. “For me it’s always intangible. It’s not about looks… it’s about

chemistry.”

Did you just arch your back a little bit? Yes you did. “I get that,” you say. “I

relate.”

We fall into a natural, sexy silence and if we were on a busy four-lane street

in L.A., I could take your hand. I could kiss you. But this is an island and there is

no anonymity and the walk is over. You open the door to the diner and my eyes

turn into hearts. Retro red. Red booths like our Red Bed and you chose this

place because of the booths. You know the host and he’s a gentle man—ring on

his finger—and he tells you your booth is open, your booth as in our booth.

We sit across from each other and I did it. I got you all to myself. And you

did it. You got me all to yourself.

I open the menu and you open a menu even though you’ve been eating here

for a hundred years. “I always get the same thing, but I think I’ll mix it up today.”

I make you want to try new things and I smile. “Any suggestions for me?”

“Everything’s good,” you say. “But I wouldn’t mind if you got something with

fries… just saying.”

You order a bowl of chili and I go for a club sandwich with fries and you

smile at me but then something catches your eye. You sit up straight and wave.

“Melanda! Over here!”

It’s supposed to be you, me, and fries but your friend Melanda clomps up to

our booth. Body by Costco—bulk-order boobs—and she moves like a linebacker

charging for an end zone, as if life is war. She’s sweaty—wash that shit off before

you enter a restaurant, Melanda—and she needs a tutorial on Instagram filters

because the dissonance shouldn’t be this jarring. You air-kiss her and tell her she

looks great—I don’t agree—and why is she here? Are you hazing me? The host

brings Melanda a menu and her nostrils flare and she’s a so person, sucking up

the oxygen with a non sequitur. “So I just had the worst row at school with that

math teacher Barry who thinks that being ‘a father of daughters’ entitles him to

help me with the Future.”

She’s not British and she shouldn’t say row and you look at me. “Melanda’s

starting a nonprofit for local girls…” Melanda bites her lip in protest and you

elbow her in response. “A nonprofit for young women…” She winces and you

throw up your hands as in I give up and she puts her eyes on me.

“So, what MK means is that I’m building an incubator for young women. It’s

called The Future Is Female. You’ve probably seen posters in the library…”

“I sure did,” I say, recalling the mixed messages inviting girls to establish

boundaries online and commanding them to use her hashtag in all of their posts.

#MelandaMatriarchySmashesThePatriarchy… and the young women who forget to

promote her brand!

Melanda laughs. “And?”

“And obviously I’m all for it.”

You’re different around her, cautious, but that’s the story of humans. We

shrink to fit. I know Melanda’s type. She doesn’t want questions. She wants

praise, so I tell her it’s a genius idea. I don’t say that there’s a way to do these

things without being a fucking asshole. But there is. “Well,” she says. “I’m past

the idea phase. We launch early next year.” She picks up your water glass.

“Which reminds me, MK, did you review my latest mission statement?”

You didn’t review it yet and you pull a packet of Splenda from your purse

and she grimaces like you pulled out a crack pipe or a Bill Cosby biography.

“Sweetie, no,” she coos. “You have to stop trying to kill yourself.”

That language was telling. On some level, she wants you to die, and you don’t

know it and she doesn’t even fully know it and it’s all a little sad.

“I know,” you say. “I’m terrible. I have to stop it with the Splenda.”

It’s not my place to butt in—are you ever gonna introduce us?—and she sips

your water and sighs. “So they fired my trainer, finally. I wasn’t the only one who

complained about him.”

You say you’ve never joined a gym and I want to hear more but Melanda cuts

you off to bitch about her toxic trainer and I wish she’d follow the rules spelled

out on her T-shirt—LET HER SPEAK—and you wink at me and… wait. Is this a

fucking setup?

“Melanda,” you say. “Before we get off track, this is Joe. I told you how he’s

volunteering at the library, he just moved here a few months ago.”

I extend my hand. “Good to meet you, Melanda.”

She doesn’t shake my hand. She sort of pats it and this isn’t a setup. My first

instinct was right. You are hazing me and Melanda’s like a wannabe tough frat

guy in a Lifetime movie who doesn’t want anyone else in the frat. “How nice,”

she simpers. “Another white man telling us what to read.” She slaps her clammy

hand over mine. “Honey, please. You know I’m kidding, just having a day.”

You make eyes at me the way you did on Day One in the library—Please be

patient—and Melanda says that her toxic trainer asked Greg, the barista at

Pegasus, to stop selling her cookies and you nod, like a therapist. “Well, I’m glad

that Greg told you about it. He’s a good guy in that way.”

Her nostrils flare. “Well let’s not pat Greg on the back, Mary Kay. He was

laughing, which means he probably laughed about it with my trainer too. Ex-

trainer.”

You nod, Dr. Mary Kay DiMarco. “Okay, but remember. Greg’s in there all

day and when you deal with the public all day, you hear crazy things. Greg does

strike me as one of the good ones. And imagine if he didn’t tell you about the

trainer.”

You tamed her without dismissing her—brilliant—and she makes a self-

deprecating joke about being Bitchy McBitcherson and now you cut her off. “Stop

it, Melanda. You’re allowed to have a reaction.”

I want to tear off your tights but for now I just nod affirmatively. “You said

it, Mary Kay.”

I was beaming when I said that, beaming at you, and Melanda felt it and we

are a party of three and she scans the diner and you nudge her, girlfriend to

girlfriend. “On a happier note, you’re seeing that Peter guy this week, right? The

one from Plenty of Fish?”

She grunts. No eye contact with you or me. “Plenty of Fish? More like plenty

of pigs. He sent me a dirty joke about Cinderella and a Pumpkin Eater and,

needless to say, I reported him.”

“Well,” you say. “You know how I feel about those apps…”

Melanda fixes her eyes on me now. “And what about you, Joe? Are you on the

apps?”

She’s not stupid. She saw me beam at you. But I don’t want to be that asshole

pooh-poohing her way of life. “No,” I say. “But maybe I’ll join just to give Peter a

piece of my mind.”

It was a joke and you laugh but she doesn’t. “Aw,” she says. “That’s sweet but I

don’t recall asking you to fight my battles. All good here.”

I let it slide. Imagine all the dick pics she gets, all the rejection. You take the

reins and change the subject. “So, Melanda. How’s my daughter? For real.”

“Good,” she says.

You look at me and tell me that Melanda knows more about Nomi than you

do and Melanda is proud—she’s one of those bestie aunts—and she says that

Nomi is cooling off on Dylan Klebold and you sigh. “Thank God. I was hoping it

was just a phase.”

“That’s what it sounded like to me,” I say, because I have a voice too. “Kids go

through phases.”

Melanda grunts. “Well, I wouldn’t diminish a young woman’s feelings as a

phase…”

It was okay when you said it was a phase and the three of us aren’t gonna be

at Eleven Winery any time soon. I get it. You take care of Melanda because she’s

alone. She’s telling you about Nomi’s ideas for her imaginary incubator and she’s

not Auntie Melanda. She’s Auntie Interloper and you almost jump out of your

seat.

“Seamus!” you shout. “Over here!”

So it really is a hazing ambush and this is Seamus in real life, working the

room like a politician, glad-handing the other diners with his masturbation

paws. Did that dryer work out okay for you, Dan? Hey, Mrs. P, I’ll swing by and check

out your furnace. He wears a long-sleeve Cooley Hardware T-shirt and a baseball

cap with the same logo—we get it, dipshit—and he’s too short for you. Too

smarmy for you. But he grins at you like he could have you if he wanted.

“Ladies,” he says. Juvenile. “Sorry I’m late.”

I can just hear God in heaven. We’ll make this one short and squat with arms too

long for his body and a bombastic voice that turns off women. But it’s hard enough

down on Earth, so let’s give him piercing blue eyes and a strong jaw so he doesn’t blow

his brains out when the midlife reaper scratches at his door. But it’s not all bad. I slide

in to the wall. At least this way I’m across from you. “Joe,” you say. “I’ve been so

excited for you to meet Seamus.”

You say that like he’s not the one who’s lucky to meet me but I am Good Joe.

Convivial Joe. I ask him if that’s his hardware store as if the question needs to be

asked and the waitress delivers coffee—he didn’t even have to place an order—

and he laughs. Smug. “Last time I checked.”

The three of you gossip about some guy you went to high school with who

got a DUI. You’re leaving me in the cold and I don’t have history with you and

this is beneath you, using your friends to ice me out. I sit here like a mute monk

and I should step outside and call Fuck You Slater, Ushkin, Graham, and Powell

to file a class action against Marta Kauffman et al., because they made Friends

and that show is the reason we’re in this mess. On a show like Cedar Cove, the

goal is love. You watch because you want Jack and Olivia to get together. But on

Friends, everything is an inside joke. They brainwash you into thinking that

friendship is more valuable than love, that old is inherently better than new

when it comes to people.

I dump ketchup on my fries and you reach onto my plate, reestablishing our

intimacy. “Is this okay?”

I nod. “Go for it.”

Seamus wrinkles his nose. “No fries for me,” he brags. “I’m doing a Murph

later. You wanna join, New Guy?”

I dab the corners of my mouth with a napkin. “What’s a Murph?”

Melanda grabs her phone and Seamus “enlightens” me about the wonders of

CrossFit, telling me a Murph will kick-start my body transformation. “I have more

muscle now than I did in high school, and in a couple months… six tops… you

could too, New Guy, if you join up.”

Melanda is fully checked out and you’re not eating my fries anymore. You’re

paying attention to him, bobbing your head as if exercise is a thing that interests

you—it isn’t—and this is why people don’t bring friends on a first fucking date,

Mary Kay.

You pound your fist on the table. “Wait,” you say. “We have to talk about

Kendall.”

Melanda cuts you off. “No, we need to talk about my queen. Shiv.”

I open my mouth. “Who’s Shiv?”

Seamus laughs. “You’ve never seen Succession? Come on, New Guy. You don’t

have a job. You have all the time in the world!”

Off you go, raving about Kendall and Kendall is a stupid name, a few letters

away from Ken Doll. It’s no fun when three people are talking about a show that

one person has never seen. You reach for a fry and your hand lingers on my

plate and I can’t stay mad at you.

“Hey, guys,” I say. “Did anyone see the movie Gloria Bell?”

None of you saw Gloria Bell and Seamus isn’t sold—sounds like a chick flick—

and Melanda shuts down—I can’t add one more thing to my list—and you smile.

“Who directed it?”

“This Chilean guy,” I say. “Sebastián Lelio.”

Melanda makes a face. “A male director telling a woman’s story… how

lovely.”

“I hear you,” I say. “But Julianne Moore is incredible. And the dialogue is top

shelf… it has a Woody Allen vibe.”

Melanda’s nostrils flare. “Okay, then,” she says. “I think that’s my cue.”

You tense up and she waves for the check and I will fix this. Fast. “Whoa,” I

say. “I just meant that it’s a smart film.”

Melanda doesn’t look at me. “I don’t condone Woody Allen or his art.”

You dig your credit card out of your purse and we will not end like this.

“Melanda, I’m not defending Woody Allen. I was just trying to say that Gloria

Bell is a good movie.”

“And you think Woody Allen is a synonym for good? Great. White male

privilege for dessert! Ugh, where is that check?”

You’re staying out of it and Seamus is giggling like an eighth-grade boy in sex

ed. “Melanda, I really do think you misunderstood me.”

“Ah, must be my lady brain on the fritz again…”

Seamus laughs and you show your teeth. “Oh, you guys… come on now. Truth

is, Joe, I think Melanda and I watched Beaches and Romy and Michele so many

times back in the day that we missed a lot of good movies and never really

caught up.”

Melanda grunts. “Sweetie, don’t bother. We can go.”

“Look,” I say. “I only mention Woody Allen because say what you will about

him… his movies have a lot of great female leads. And Julianne Moore is

incredible in Gloria Bell.” You are staring at me like you want me to stop but I

can’t stop now. “Melanda, I think you’d like the movie, I’m sure of it.”

“Of course you’re sure. You know everything!”

I’m taking the heat for all the monstrous men in the world—who can blame

Melanda for using me as a whipping post?—and you reach for my ice-cold fries,

you’re stress-eating and I won’t let Melanda Peach me.

“Melanda,” I say. “I don’t know everything. No one does.”

“Pff,” she says. “Least of all me, a woman…” She shakes her head. “A librarian

who endorses a child molester. How nice!”

Shortus drops a twenty and makes a run for it and you pick up the bill and

Melanda’s on her feet, lecturing me. “I’m sorry I get passionate.”

“Melanda,” I say. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I’m not apologizing to you,” she says and she looks at you like Can you believe

this guy? “As a teacher, I know that we can’t separate the art from the artist. And

I won’t praise a man for telling a woman’s story. But you do you, New Guy.” She

smiles at you. “You ready, sweetie? Do you need a ride?”

You squirm. Message received. “Thanks,” I say. “But I feel like walking.”

Melanda smiles. “I would too if I ate all those carbs.”

You look at me but what can you do? She’s your friend, your old friend, and

you get into the car with her and I am on foot. In hell. I fucked up my hazing

and by the time I get back to the library you’re gone—you have a conference in

Poulsbo—and I don’t think I made your coed frat.

At the end of my shift, I test the waters and post a page from a diner scene in

Empire Falls and two minutes later…

@LadyMaryKay likes your photo.

Okay, you wouldn’t like it if you didn’t still like me and of course you like

me. We have our books and the Brooklynites are right. Books are magic. We are

magic. You send me a text.

You: Did you have fun at lunch?:)

I know it’s considered rude to respond to a text with a phone call but it’s also

inconsiderate to haze a guy before you have sex with him. I walk outside. I call

you.

You pick up on the first ring. “Well, hello there!”

“Is this a bad time?”

“I just got home but I have a couple seconds… What’s up? Everything okay?”

“Well, that’s what I was gonna ask you…”

“You mean lunch? Oh Joe, Melanda lives to debate and she liked you, she

did.”

My muscles relax. “Phew, because for a minute there it felt like she didn’t…

but if you say everything’s okay…”

“Joe, seriously. You were fine. Melanda… Well, yeah, she gets fired up. But

she’s very passionate, very smart and you know…”

Your daughter is home. I hear cabinets slamming and you tell me that you

should probably go and I do the right thing. I let you go. For a moment I consider

walking to your house. But if I go and spy on you, I open myself up to busybody

neighbors who might “warn” you about a “strange man” lurking in your yard.

(Dear Bainbridge: Get a life.) Things are supposed to be different with you,

Mary Kay. I am supposed to be different with you. If I watch you from afar, I

am transforming from a person who is in your life to a person who is on the

outside, looking in. I don’t want that for us and I know you don’t either.

I do the right thing and go home, I don’t feel at home in my home because

the fecal-eyed family is out there, throwing bean bags into holes—yawn—so I

grab a coffee and head downstairs to the place that makes my house special, the

reason I chose the property over all the others. It’s called a Whisper Room. You

turn on the lights, you close the door and that’s it. The world is gone They can’t

hear me and I can’t hear them—long live soundproof spaces—and Love thought

this room was creepy when I showed her the pictures. She saw padded walls and

she called it a cage. But you get me, Mary Kay. You know this house. When you

realized where I live, you said you’d had wonderful times in this Whisper Room.

You knew the guys who owned the place. You hung out down here and I take a

deep breath—maybe I’m breathing you in right now—and I have to be patient.

You really are one the one. I just have to fight harder.

I do sit-ups and watch a little fucking Succession. Your boy Kendall has weak

shoulders and basset hound eyes. I bet he never read Empire Falls, let alone Last

Night at the Lobster, another selection for our Quiet Ones at the library. The

endorphins kick in—Shortus is right about some things—and I don’t want to sue

Marta Kauffman anymore. I want to send her flowers because she and her

Friends also taught us that real relationships take time, that sometimes you make

a baby with the wrong person, you fall in love with the wrong person, but

eventually, you get with the right one.

You.

It’s been two days since you ambushed me with your fraternity siblings and I

didn’t “stalk” you. I’ve been good. I went against all my best instincts and joined

CrossFit to make nice with Shortus (a.k.a. to keep an eye on that fucker just in

case) and I’ll admit it, Mary Kay. I did judge you a little bit. This adolescent

cliquey side of you is not ideal. You’re a woman. A master of library science. But

you’ve been hunkered down on Land’s Fucking End for your entire life. I tear

the tag off a brand-new black cashmere sweater—my gift to you, for us—and

tonight you’ll see the light.

It’s date night, motherfuckers!

You were so cute when you asked me out. You were smoothing a sticker on

Dolly Carton and I bent over to look at the sticker—THE FUTURE IS FEMALE—and

you stayed low, close. I leaned in closer. “Did you get permission to vandalize

Ms. Carton?”

You staggered upright and flattened your skirt. “Haha,” you said. You looked

at your phone. “I should probably get going. I have book club tonight at the

wine bar…” I smiled—oh Bainbridge, you need to see Cocktail—and you wanted

me to know where you’re going. “Eleven as in the winery,” you said, so nervous,

so fucking cute. “But we’ll be outta there by ten.”

You waved goodbye and you scratched your tights, drawing my eyes to your

legs.

Invitation received, Mary Kay, and I RSVP yeah as in yes.

I’m waiting for you in a recessed mini-mall across the street from Eleven and

finally your Book Club winds down and there are credit cards and hugs, false

promises about getting together soon and why do you women lie to each other so

much? I slink around the block—and I slow down—and you spot me.

“Joe? Is that you?”

You jaywalk to me—no RIP Fincher to issue any tickets—and I meet you

halfway, across the sky. Do we hug? We don’t hug. I nod toward the bar I chose

for us, not a fucking winery, just a pub. “Come on,” I say. “One drink.”

You shift your purse. “I should probably go home. We ran late tonight.”

I expected a little pushback and I know all about your shouldprobably

disorder. Shel Silverstein should probably have written a poem about the

shouldprobablies and the female need to express her awareness of what a good

woman would do right now. But you’re still hesitating and what the hell is there

to think about? You’re my neighbor. You live right around the corner and the pub

is right around the corner and your daughter isn’t six—there’s no babysitter to

relieve—and your shoulders are tense getting tenser—“I don’t know, Joe…”—and

did you learn nothing from Lisa Fucking Taddeo? Stop feeling guilty, for fuck’s

sake.

I am the man you need me to be right now. Chill. Cavalier. “That’s too bad,” I

say. “This could have been my very first Book Club.”

Your shoulders drop. “Well, I’d hate for you to miss out on your very first

Book Club. One drink. One.”

No one means that when they say it and I open the door to the Harbour

Public House and you walk in and we are a couple now. We make our way to a

table and I tell you how much I really did like meeting your friends and you are

puffed up. “Oh good! See, they’re nice, right?”

You sit in a booth and I sit on the other side. “And you were right,” I say.

“Melanda isn’t mad. She followed me on Instagram…” White lie. I followed her

first but she did reciprocate. “And she made me think about a lot of stuff…” Ha!

“And her incubator sounds incredible…” As if her posters are doing anything for

anyone but her. “You gotta love that, ya know?”

You gotta love me and you do. I’m in your circle, at your table. “Yeah,” you

say. “She’s great, she has a powerful voice…”

“Extremely. Your people are good people.”

You smile. I smile. The heat between us is palpable and you look around and

remark on how empty it is and it’s just us and a couple of guys in wool hats.

Sailor types. Our jackets come off and it’s obvious you’ve been drinking and the

barmaid approaches, a soft and pear-shaped pre-Mothball. I ask to see a menu

and you look at me. “Oh,” you say. “I ate. I should probably just have a water.”

I smile, undeterred by another shouldprobably. “I don’t mind eating alone.”

You end up asking for a glass of tequila—frisky—and I order a Southern fried

chicken sandwich and a local vodka soda and you promise to steal French fries

again as you lace your fingers together as if you’re on a job interview. “So,” you

say. “How’s the house coming along?”

“Shit,” I say. “So, it’s true. You really don’t talk about the book in Book Club.

You talk about everything but the book.”

Your voice is loose with liquor but you’re nervous—it is a first date—and

you’re babbling about Billy Joel—you’ve always loved “Italian Restaurant”—as

you text your daughter and tuck your phone into your purse. You tell me about

your Book Club, how my fecal-eyed neighbor Nancy picked apart the book. We

agree that there is always a Nancy and I tell you about a reading I hosted in

New York when a Nancy had notes for the author. We’re in flow. The talk is

small, but we’ve never been like this, alone in the dark, at night, in a booth.

“Okay,” you say. “I have to ask. I know you were done with New York and

L.A. But I’ve been thinking about you…” You said it. “And I feel like there has to

be more. A single guy moves into a big house on Bainbridge. What’s her name?

The reason you’re here.”

I groan the way any guy does when a girl wants to hear about his past and

you plead. You endured three hours with a bunch of women you’ve known since

high school, most of whom are married to men or women you’ve known for

aeons.

“Come on,” you say. “Tell me why you really bit the bullet. Who are you

running from?”

It’s the dream—you want to know everything about me—and it’s the

nightmare—I can’t tell you everything about me. I learned the hard way, with

Love, but there is no way for us to move on unless you learn why I am the way I

am, handsome, available, good.

I start at the beginning, my first love in New York. I tell you that I fell hard

for Heather (RIP Candace). It was lust at first sight. I saw her in a play—pretty

as Linda Ronstadt—and I tracked her down at the playhouse.

You wipe your glass with a napkin. “Wow. You went all out for this girl.”

“I was young. It’s different when you’re young. You get obsessed.”

You give me a yeah and you are jealous, the idea of me obsessed with another

woman. I sip my drink while you picture Linda Ronstadt on top of me and I tell

you what you need to hear, that Heather broke my heart. You perk up. You

want to know more and I tell you about the day she dumped me. “I’m checking

out this apartment in Brighton Beach because I think we’re gonna move in

together,” I begin, remembering that day on the beach, Candace. “It was a hot

summer night. I’ll never forget the smell, the gnats…”

You’re happy because this girl made me unhappy and you pout. “Please don’t

ruin New York for me, Joe.”

I laugh and I tell you that Heather dumped me over voicemail while I was in

that apartment and you gasp—no—and I laugh defensively, lovingly, the way you

do when enough time has passed and you’re ready to love again, in a way you

never have before. “Yep.”

My chicken sandwich arrives and you pick up one of my French fries and you

chew. “Wow. You lost the girl and the apartment.”

I take a bite of my chicken and you reach for another fry. We are clicking.

You want the bacon, I can tell, and I pull it out of my sandwich like it’s a block

of wood in Jenga and you pick it up. Crunch.

“If you think Heather’s bad, oh God, let me tell you about Melissa.”

You rub your hands together and this is fun. It’s cathartic for me to tell you

about Melissa (RIP Beck). In this version, I was a waiter at a diner on the Upper

West Side and Melissa came into the restaurant, sat in my section, and wrote

her number on the bill. You take a big sip—Well, that’s aggressive—and I say that

Melissa was too young for me. Your cheeks turn as red as the Red Bed. You like

that I’m the anti-Seamus, that I want a woman, not what our youth-obsessed

society would call a trophy.

“Yeah,” I say. “Way too young, but I thought she had an old soul. Her favorite

book was Desperate Characters.”

You wipe your hands, feeling threatened again. I tell you what I learned from

Melissa, that reading doesn’t always promote empathy. She was a competitive

fencer and she was in a love-hate codependent relationship with her best friend

Apple (RIP Peach Salinger). “But that wasn’t the problem,” I say. “In the end,

Melissa was in a relationship with one person and one person only.”

We say it at the same time: “Melissa.”

You feel for me. I endured Melissa’s numerous microbetrayals. I tried to love

her, help her focus on her fencing (writing). And then she cheated on me. She

slept with her coach (psychologist). You bury your head in your hands. “No,”

you say. “Oh God, that’s horrible on so many levels.”

“I know.”

“A coach.”

“I know.”

I’m eating my sandwich and you’re looking at me like I should be crying. “It’s

really not so bad,” I say, realizing that it isn’t, because look where it got me, to

you. “You’re lucky to get your heart broken. That just means you have a heart.”

I’m not ready to talk about Amy, about Love, so I move us past anecdotes into

theory. “Everyone is the wrong person until you meet the right person…” You

rub your empty ring finger. “I’m not bitter, Mary Kay. If anything, I hope they’re

doing great…” Up in heaven, or dust in the wind. “I hope they found the right

person.” I pray for a remorseful almighty lord—Hare Forty—and I take a big bite

of my sandwich.

You let the waitress know that we would like another round—fuck yes—and

you admire my healthy outlook on life. I tell you it’s no big deal. “So,” I say, because

the door to your heart is cracked now, the tequila, the details about my life, and

you’re finally ready for me to enter. “You and Nomi… real-life Gilmore Girls.

What’s the story there?”

You let out a deep sigh. You look around the restaurant, but no one is

listening to us. No one is close. I know it’s not easy for you, being on a date, but

you are. You know it. You begin. “I was young but I wasn’t that young, and my

life… well, I told you about my parents.”

“Mary Kay mom and dear old dad.”

You smile. “Yeah.”

“Did your dad put up a fight when you moved up here?”

I smell onions, layers peeling away, revealing the truth under the truth. You

tell me you didn’t understand the divorce. There was no scandal, no cheating. “It

was like one day, my mom woke up and she didn’t want her pink Cadillac

anymore. She didn’t want him either.”

“Were there signs?”

“I missed them,” you say. “Are you good about signs? Reading people…”

Yes. “Well, who can say?”

“I think we all see what we want to see.” You look around again, so nervous,

as if one of these people is going to text Nomi and tell her that her mother is on

a date. And then you relax again. “Well, my mom sort of just announced that

she was done with Mary Kay, that we were moving to Bainbridge Island, that

she was craving nature.”

“And you don’t know why she left him?”

“No clue,” you say. “It was amiable. There was no custody battle, no fight. He

was so calm that he drove us to the airport! He’s my dad and he’s kissing us

goodbye like we were going away for the weekend. We left him all alone. My

mother made me complicit. But then, that’s not fair to say because it’s like I

said. It was all so damn amiable.”

I feel for you, I really do. “Jesus.”

“One day my mom’s harping on me to use more eyeliner and the next thing

you know… we live here and she’s telling me that I don’t need lipstick. I didn’t

ask her why we left, but then… what’s scarier than your mom becoming a total

stranger?”

I think of where I stand with Love, powerless against a woman’s blind

determination to make our child her own. “I get it.”

“And then, after all that, my mom spent every night on the phone with my

dad, egging him on to eat better.”

“Strange.”

“Right? And this was before cell phones. I couldn’t call my friends back

home. I didn’t have any friends here yet. I felt so alone. She was always in her

room, taking care of my dad, letting him tell her how beautiful she is as if they

were still married. I remember thinking, Wow. You leave him… You move to

another state. But you never leave a man, even when you do.”

“Jesus Fucking Christ.”

You air-toast me with your empty glass. “And that, my friend, is too much

information.” We’ve come full circle, inverted the joke, and you signal for

another drink and you’re in flow, the levee broke. “It’s like… we all know about

sham marriages. But what about a sham divorce?”

“That’s a good way to describe it.”

You stare at the table and the waitress plunks our drinks down and you

thank her and sip. “I just wish I knew why she left him at all if she was only

going to spend the rest of her life on the phone with him, you know? Because

why not just stay together if that’s what it is? Why uproot my entire life?”

I don’t answer your question. It was rhetorical. All you need is for me to

listen.

“I look back and I don’t know how I survived.” You breathe. You are

activating the most important empathy, the empathy we have for ourselves. “My

mother and I were bickering nonstop. One night I lost my temper and threw my

landline at her and she had this huge welt on her forehead, so bad she had to get

bangs to cover it up.” I smile but you furrow your brow and oh that’s right:

violence against women is always bad, even when it’s you. “It was like Grey

Gardens minus the fun…” I love you. “I guess your Cedar Cove fantasy got under

my skin because no one welcomed us with open arms.” You sip your drink.

“Then, one day, Melanda asked me to eat lunch together. She told me all about

her fucked-up family…” Foregone conclusion. They named their child Melanda. “I

told her all about mine. She said I’d fit in really well because everyone on this

island is fucked up, they just like to pretend they’re not and… I dunno. Life just

went on from there. Melanda was my buffer. She showed me all that graffiti at

Fort Ward. And that graffiti… well, it helped. It still helps.”

“How so?”

“It’s like a conversation that’s still alive. My mom and I, we never got around

to hashing it out. But I go to Fort Ward and I feel like I can still talk to her even

though she’s gone. Like maybe one day she’ll appear in the sky and tell me that

I’m not doomed to mess up my daughter the way she messed me up…” That is

why you stay away from love and you shrug. “I dunno. I’m probably just drunk.”

You’re not drunk. You just haven’t found anyone to talk to. You look at me—

you can’t believe I’m finally here—then you smirk. You can’t believe I’m still

here. “Pretty bad, huh?”

“No,” I say. “Pretty human.”

I said the right thing and you laugh. “Well, I swore I’d never confuse Nomi

like that. Ever.”

You’re self-conscious. You felt so safe with me that you forgot about where

we are and you glance around the pub, nervous. You wipe away a half-tear and

you snort. “Sometimes I think I got pregnant just to piss her off, to remind her

that if you really love someone, you know, you fuck them instead of just talking

on the phone…” You are a little drunk now. “And once in a while when you’re

actually having sex, the condom breaks. C’est la vie.”

“I get it,” I say.

Another anxious look around the bar. “Well, the timing was tough… but

yeah, I did have this hunger to make my own little family, to kind of show her

up.”

“And you did.”

“Have you met my kid?”

“Oh come on,” I say. “Your kid is fucking great. You know it.”

You do know it and it’s important for you to realize that you are a good

mother because once you see that, you can let me in all the way. We are still

treading water, even after all you said. You’re holding back as you open up

about your father and explain that he calls you a lot. “I don’t always pick up, I

mean I have Nomi, I have a job, and every call ends in frustration. I’m not my

mother, you know?”

“It’s fundamentally different.”

“I can’t stay on the phone with him all night. I will not do that to Nomi.”

You think all men are a threat to your relationship with your daughter and I

am here to help you change. “I’m sure he understands that.”

“I just… I will not do that to my daughter. I won’t let my life ruin her life.”

You think it’s your fault that your dad is sad and I know how that feels. I

push my plate to the edge of the table. You look at me. You need me. “Look,” I

begin. “You can’t fix someone who doesn’t want to be happy.” Hi, Candace. “You

can’t make anyone see the light if they prefer the dark.” Hi, Beck. “You try to do

that, you end up on a dark road. You make bad decisions.” I really did move to

Los Angeles for Amy, the stupidity. “And then you get stuck.” I have a

permanent bond with Love Quinn, a son. “It’s not easy, but you have to accept

that there’s no right move with your dad. You can’t save him from himself.”

The pub is clearing out and you’re rubbing your neck. “Wow,” you say. “And

here I thought we’d just be gossiping about the Mothballs.”

You’re officially drunk. Floppy hands and loose lips and still I want you. You

tell a long-winded go-nowhere story about an old friend in Arizona and you

can’t remember her name and you say you feel like a traitor sometimes. You

don’t keep in touch with anyone from your past in the desert and you came here

like a phoenix from Phoenix.

“I’m the same way, Mary Kay. The ability to move on doesn’t make you a

sociopath.”

You raise your glass and wink. “Let’s hope so.”

We’re closer than Closer. You tuck your chin into your hand. “Joe,” you say,

pulling me in, making me think of your Murakami, all but sucked inside. “Tell

me… Do you like it in our library?”

What I say right now matters and I take my time. “I like it in your library.”

You felt my your. Your foxy lips are wet. “Do you feel good in the library?”

I felt your good. “Yes, I feel good in your library.”

“And you’re pleased with your boss?”

Oh this is fun and I stir the ice in my cocktail. “Mostly.”

“Oh,” you say, and I am the human and you are my resource. “Mr. Goldberg,

do you have a complaint about your supervisor?”

“That’s a harsh word, Ms. DiMarco.”

You lick your lips. “Tell me about your complaint.”

“Like I said, it’s not a complaint. I just want more, Mary Kay.”

“More what, Mr. Goldberg?”

Your bare foot finds my leg under the table and I pay the bill. Fast. Cash. I

am up. You are up. You say you need to stop in the bathroom and the

bathrooms are off to the left and you go in and close the door and then you

open the door.

You grab me by the collar of my black sweater and pull me into the

bathroom and press your body into my body, my body against the wall. The art

in here is full of passion. Nudity and salt water. A naked woman in the sea on

her back. Her hands grasp the shoulders of a frightened sailor, still clothed. It’s a

shipwreck. It’s us. Wrecked. Groping. You kiss me and I kiss you and your

tongue is at home in my mouth—land ho!—and the waves wash over your

shouldprobablies. My hands slide under your tights—no panties, cotton crotch—

and my thumb finds your Lemonhead—and you cling to me. You say it all. You

wanted me on the Red Bed and you bite my sweater—this sweater makes you

crazy—and there are sparks in the water—we are on fire—and you are the last

page of Ulysses. You grab me. Oh God, Joe. Oh God.

But then you break away. Cinderella when the clock strikes twelve.

You remember what you are. A mom. My boss.

And you are gone.

I know, I know. It was just a kiss. I barely felt your Murakami and I didn’t lick

your Lemonhead but then again. Oh God, Joe. Oh God. What a fucking kiss.

When you’re with the right person you do the right thing and I was smart to

let you go home. I went to my Whisper Room and counted my blessings for all

the bad women who came before you. I get it now. Of course you ran. Real love

is a lot, especially at our age.

I don’t go to Pegasus on the way to work—your kiss is my caffeine—and you

pushed me away, but this is the nature of grown-up love, especially when kids

are involved: push, pull, push, pull. I open the door to the library—pull—and you

aren’t at the front desk and the Mothball on duty doesn’t like me. The day we

met she asked if I’m a Bellevue Goldberg and when I said no she turned her nose

up at me. She points at Nomi’s chair.

“You mind moving that? It’s too cold by that window.”

I move the fucking chair into the fucking stacks and I grab my lunch—WE

eat the beef and WE eat the broccoli—and I tell the Mothsnob that I’ll be right back

and she rolls her eyes. Rude. “I hate to break it to you, but your little friend

called in sick today.”

No. No.

The Mothsnob just chuckles.

You’re not sick and I go into the break room and where are you? Were you

really that drunk? Was our kiss made of tequila? I storm away from Silverstein’s

Whatifs and I pass your office and your door is closed. There is no light in the

attic and you’re not sick. You’re scared.

I take my post in Fiction and the day drags. I sell a recently widowed

accountant on some Stewart O’Nan and I get a day-tripping lesbian to read the

first chapter of Fashion Victim and I am good at my job but I am better when

you’re here to chime in. All day I check my phone and you don’t text and I don’t

text and you kissed me so maybe I should be the one to text you and I try to find

the words.

Hi.

But that’s too fucking wimpy.

Hey.

But that’s too fucking cocky.

Are you there?

But that’s too fucking pushy.

I’m here.

But that’s too fucking needy.

I hate cell phones because if it was 1993 I wouldn’t have a fucking phone and

did you tell Melanda about our kiss? Did she get into your head? I walk out to

the Japanese garden. I could bail on my shift—I’m just a volunteer—and I could

pop by your house and be the Cusack to your valedictorian but I can’t do that

because Nomi’s the one who’s graduating this year, not you. And I don’t do that.

I don’t “pop by” and I don’t steal phones, not anymore. I check your Instagram—

nothing—and I check the Meerkat’s Instagram but there’s nothing about you,

nothing but Klebold. I want to share a picture of Love Story but I would never

be that lame with you. That blunt. That clingy.

I need to talk to you now because the longer we’re apart, the more the kiss

seems like a scratch in the windshield that’s easily sealed and I want to know

why you’re hiding.

At the end of my never-ending shift I skulk back to the break room,

wondering if I used too much tongue and then the door opens. It’s you. Your

eyes are puffy and you fake a smile. “Hi.”

“Hey,” I say. “You’re here.”

Do we hug? We don’t hug. You’re wearing a faded green sweater and you

don’t smile. You gnaw on your lip—you didn’t get enough sleep—and you say

you just stopped by to pick up a few things. You sit across from me like we’re a

couple of Mothballs comparing our MRI results, like you weren’t sucking on my

tongue a few hours ago. I lean over the table to get Closer and you arch your

back. Cold. Farther.

“Look,” I say. “The last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.”

“I know,” you say. “I feel the same way.”

I don’t speak. You don’t speak. You told me so much last night but I am

getting that sick feeling that you didn’t tell me everything, that what you told

me isn’t the whole story, but only part of the story. You are looking at me as if

you are warming me up for the news. The bad news. The worst news in the

world.

And here it comes. Those treacherous words: “Joe… we can’t do this. You

didn’t tell anyone, did you?”

“Of course not, Mary Kay. You know I’d never do that…”

You are too relieved. “Okay, good, because if anyone here found out… if

anyone said anything to Nomi…”

“Mary Kay, look at me.”

You look at me. “I am a steel fucking trap. You have my word.”

You calm down a little, but you’re still flinching, looking over your shoulder,

a paranoid inmate on Crucible Island. You don’t let me talk. You say that last

night was a drunken mistake—no—and you weren’t thinking clearly—yes you

fucking were—and I tell you that you were perfect and you shudder. “I am

anything but perfect.”

My words are coming out all wrong and I know you’re not perfect. I’m not

perfect, but it would be too cheesy and needy to tell you that we are perfect

together.

You purse your lips, those lips that are puffy from my kiss. Me. “Can we just

go back to normal? You know… how we were?”

I bob my head like a trained seal that couldn’t make it in the wild.

“Absolutely,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting to rush into anything with you. We can

take it slow. I want to take it slow.”

It’s a big fat lie and you cluck. “That’s the thing, Joe. There is no ‘it.’ There

can’t be an ‘it.’ I have a daughter.”

“I know.”

“I can’t be getting home drunk after midnight. She has to come first.”

“Of course Nomi comes first. I know that.”

You hide your face behind your hands and tell me that you’re not emotionally

available right now and I want to take a sledgehammer to the chip in the

windshield and smash the glass because you’re making our kiss about your

daughter. You pull your hands away. “It’s her senior year, Joe, and I don’t want

to miss any part of it…” Then don’t spend two nights a week at a fucking wine

bar with Melanda. “She needs me. She doesn’t have a lot of friends.” You raised

an independent daughter who likes to read and so what if she’s not a

minisocialite the way you were? Neither was I at that age. “To you she’s halfway

out the door, all grown-up… But time flies and it’s almost Thanksgiving and in a

few months, she’ll be away. And I just can’t make any big changes when change

is already coming.” Ha! As if life is ever that predictable and you should let me

in now, right now, so that I’m carving your turkey next week and you are wrong,

so wrong and you sigh. “Do you get it?”

“Of course I get it, Mary Kay. You’re right, there’s no rush. We can put this

on hold.”

You smile. “What a relief. Thank you, Joe.”

You win because you built the boxing ring—Me vs. Nomi—and I can’t hit

above the belt, in the womb. That said, you came to see me and you wouldn’t be

justifying yourself to me if you didn’t care about me, if you didn’t want me

eating your mashed potatoes and your Murakami. Yeah, there was something off

about your little speech, Mary Kay, because deep down, you know you belong

with me now, right now.

Our chairs squeak when we stand and you hang your head. “Do you hate me?”

You’re better than that. You don’t ask stupid questions. But I give you the

stupid answer you deserve right now. “Of course I don’t hate you. Come on. You

know that.”

Then you bite your lip and say the worst word in the English language.

“Friends?”

You cannot shove me onto a tufted sofa with Seamus and Melanda and we’re

not friends, Mary Kay. You want to fuck me. But I shake your hand and repeat

your hollow sitcom of a word that does not apply to us. “Friends.”

I go outside. I walk and I walk and my pinky toes burn—these sneakers are for

show, not for this—and I walk away from your house and I want to walk into

your house and I really did fuck up last night, today. I should have torn off your

chastity tights. I should have brought you home or I should have gone home

with you and there is no going back and I am the man. Bainbridge is safe, but

did I text you to make sure you got home okay?

Nope.

You’d been drinking and did I insist on being your escort?

Nope.

I walk into Blackbird and the whole fecal-eyed family is in here—even the

grandfather—and this island is too fucking small and there are so many of them

and there is only one of me and I get a coffee and sit outside on a bench.

I go on Instagram. Bad Joe. Bad. Night is falling and Nomi posted a picture

of you on your sofa and you are asleep in your clothes.

When mom is “sick.” #Hangover.

I wish I could like this picture, I wish I could love this picture but I don’t feel

the love right now. My toes are on fire, my whole body is on fire but you’re out

cold, dead to me, to the world. I take a screenshot of the photo and examine

every corner, every centimeter. I’m not invading your privacy, Mary Kay. We all

post our photos knowing that our followers will zoom in to grade us. I zoom in.

My heart beats.

The fecal-eyed family barges onto the street and none of them say hello—

FUCK YOU, FAMILY—and I look down at my phone and what the hell, Mary

Kay? There’s a bottle of beer on the end table that makes my blistered toes

pound. You don’t drink beer, you don’t like the taste and you don’t let Nomi

drink beer and the bottle is open, half empty. Whose is it, Mary Kay? Who the

fuck is drinking beer in your house? I send a text to Shortus.

Hey Seamus! That gym kicked my ass today. Beer?

I wait and I walk. My toes are never going to speak to me again.

No can do, New Guy. Doing a ten day dry out. Remember: That voice in your head

that says you can’t do it is a liar.

Ugh. I hate gym culture and the beer isn’t his, but whose is it? I reach the

beginning of your street and your house is close but if I walk down that street

and look in your window… I can’t. I promised I would be good and being good

means believing in you, in us, and hey, it’s just one beer. You did look bad today.

I don’t know everything about you and it’s possible that you drink a half a beer

to take the edge off when you’re hungover and I go home and watch more

Succession and you don’t call, you don’t text and Shortus hits me up to tell me

that we can get a beer next week maybe and phones have made it so easy to be

friends without ever having to see your friends and that’s one good thing about

today. One.

I did it. I survived the longest most mind-fuckiest day of the year and my mind

is clear again. I’m calm. I’m not gonna let one stupid bottle of beer get in our

way. All that matters is the kiss, Mary Kay. You broke a rule for me. You swore

that you would never get involved with some guy while your daughter lives at

home and you did.

And you know what? I need to bend a rule too.

This is a scenic island and I’ve barely done any exploring—I will not go to

Fort Fucking Ward without you—and okay, yeah. I went on a couple of nature

walks in the Grand Forest when I first moved here, but I was too raw to really

breathe any of it in.

I tie the laces on my running shoes—my toes won’t hate me today—and I zip

up my hoodie and I put on my headphones—Hello, Sam Cooke—and I lock up

the house and do what all the well-rounded motherfucking men around here do

every day, some of them twice a day: run.

I could run on one of the beaches but the coast is rocky and mottled by

McMansions. I could run on the sidewalks but why should I waste my time on

pavement when I can run in the woods? I didn’t design the island, Mary Kay.

And it’s not my fault that your house is in a development. It’s not my fault that

you chose to live in a waterfront home where the only thing that separates your

backyard from the sea is a two-foot-wide trail that is open to the public.

Your choice, not mine.

I didn’t know you when I moved here and you’re the one who told me that

you live right around the corner. You’ve said it a dozen times and you weren’t

lying and I’m here, not on your street, but on the trail by the water and Jesus

Christ, Mary Kay. There’s something almost perverse about this trail, about you

and your neighbors in Wesley Landing. You’re all fearless exhibitionists, aren’t

you? You all choose to live on land that is the opposite of private. You don’t

have fences because fences would block your access to the trail, your view of the

foliage, the rocky coast, the water and I would never live like this.

But you do.

I stop to stretch, as all runners must do to keep the muscles loose. Healthy.

There’s a large rock on the property line of your house, engraved with the

name of your community. It’s wider than the trunks of the trees and this is the

perfect place for me to stretch my calves. I plant my feet against the back and

lean over and it feels good to stretch and as luck would have it—and at some

point my luck did have to turn around—I have a view of your deck. Who knew?

Your sliding glass door is open and you sit on your deck with a half-empty

bottle of Diet Coke. See that, Mary Kay? You do need me. You sure as fuck don’t

need any more sugar substitutes. You’re on the phone, no doubt with Melanda,

and I turn off Sam Cooke and remove my headphones the way a lot of people

do when they stretch. I can’t hear you and I’m no botanist, but I think there

might be poison ivy where I am, so to be safe, I move to another tree. You’re

used to the people in the woods, on the trails, and you don’t flinch at the leaves

crunching beneath my feet. I can hear you now. You don’t know what to make

for dinner. You have salmon steaks in the freezer but they’re frostbitten—you

need a new freezer, you need to see my freezer—and now you’re back to

counseling Melanda. Don’t text him. You know how it is. If he likes you, he’ll text you,

and if he doesn’t like you, then it’s his loss. She’s arguing—can’t hear her, don’t need

to hear her—and the Meerkat is in the kitchen, slamming cabinets. Annoyed.

You ask Melanda to hold on and you turn your head.

“Nomi, honey, do you want salmon?”

“Do I ever want salmon? It’s like a hundred years old. And before you say it,

no, I don’t want Mexican chicken.”

You laugh—you’re sick of your own chicken too—and sigh. Oh, to be a

mother and cook every day for thousands of days and be tired of your own

Mexican chicken.

The Meerkat slams another cabinet. “Can we cook out on the grill?”

“Well, I guess so… Are you already hungry?”

The Meerkat shrugs—whatever—and she grabs a bag of Tostitos and stomps

off to her room. You go back to Melanda and I feel for Melanda, who’s probably

contemplating a singleton cauliflower pizza. “Sorry,” you say. “I’m back.”

You get a text and you read the text and you respond to the text and is it the

man who drank that domestic beer on your end table? You’re still counseling

Melanda, but what about us? When is it your turn to tell her about the Best Kiss

of Your Life? And seriously. Who drank that fucking beer?

The acid is cooling in my thighs but it’s burning in my heart and you shiver

and stand. You go into your kitchen and you close the screen door. You close

the slider and it squeaks—you need WD-40—and I can’t bear the silence so I put

on my headphones. Sam Cooke tries to comfort me but he’s wasting his time. I

touch my fingers to my toes and the blood rushes to my head and my

headphones cancel the noise of the world, but they can’t silence the alarm in my

limbic system, the one that dings now. Goosebumps crop up on my arms and

my legs as the hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight, so many tiny

soldiers. Fight or flight. Slowly, I lift my head and the alarm in my brain was

right. Someone is here. Three feet away. Armed with a backpack and a cell

phone and the two most dangerous weapons in these woods: eyes, blinking

beneath unflattering round glasses.

It’s your daughter. The Meerkat.

On Animal Planet, this is how the lion dies. The lion has no natural predators

but an intrusive human on a mission to break the rules of nature shoots him for

the fuck of it.

“Hey,” she says. “You know that’s my house, right?”

I close my eyes. Please, God. Please don’t kill me now.

The Meerkat remains standing. Emotionless. Still. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I got a cramp.”

She nods. Distracted. Good sign. “One time this old guy died out here. It was

summer. He had a heart attack.”

That stings a little but it also snaps me out of my paranoia. “Well, I’m not

that old.”

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m just in a mood because my mom’s making me go get

charcoal.”

Ah, so you were texting with your Meerkat. “You going to the Town &

Country?”

She furrows her brow. “We just call it the T & C. God, you’re such a newbie

still.”

That was a little vicious, but it’s the same with kids as it is with adults. It’s

never about you. It’s about them. She knows she was rude and she squeezes the

straps of her backpack and I smile. Cool Joe. Affable Joe. “I’ll head there too,” I

say. “I could use a Vitaminwater.”

Now we’re walking and this is normal. This is what people do when they

bump into each other and the Meerkat truly isn’t alarmed to see me and here

comes another jogger—Hey, Nomi!—and she knows him too and I flinch at a dog

barking in the woods and she laughs. “It’s just a dog! Are you scared of dogs?”

“No,” I say. I’m still rattled but I have to remember. I was caught off guard,

yes. But I wasn’t caught. “I’m just out of my comfort zone. You grew up in all this

but the woods are creepy to me.”

I remember taking RIP Beck to the woods and I shudder and the Meerkat

grunts. “Oh please,” she says. “These aren’t woods. The real woods are up by my

old school. See, when I was in middle school, I found this old Buick there.”

I nod. “Cool.”

“Yeah…” She sounded like you just then. “There were all these empty alcohol

bottles…” She’s so young for her age. Alcohol. “And the year before that, there

was this big abandoned house in the woods too. That place was supercool. It

used to be a home for wayward boys.”

I raise my eyebrows like a good listener. “Whoa.”

“Now that was creepy. You go up to the fourth floor and you think the house

is gonna fall down and there are old-fashioned wheelchairs and cobwebs. It was

so cool. But, whatever. Everything cool here gets destroyed.”

“That’s just called ‘growing up.’ See, down at Isla, I listen to these old guys,

actual old guys, and they sound like you.”

“Like me? I don’t think so.”

“Oh sure, Nomi. They talk about how this place used to be too, how nobody

locked their doors and they left the keys in the car and didn’t worry about

anyone breaking in because there were more crickets and frogs than people.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Well, that’s the point. Every generation thinks their way was the best way.”

“But the home for wayward boys… that was actually cool. It was a place to go.

Then they tore it down and now there’s nothing.”

We step aside for a set of cyclists.

“So you’re from New York or something, right?”

That’s a good sign, Mary Kay. A show of actual social skills! “Yep,” I say.

“And it was nothing like this. My library is a good example. We had homeless

people in there, crackheads… now that was scary.”

“At least it’s real. Everything here is fake, fake, fake.”

She tugs on the straps of her backpack and I’m so relieved that I’m an adult.

What a nightmare it is to be a teenager, to think there’s a place where everyone

isn’t fake, fake, fake. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m just mad. My mom always goes crazy

before Thanksgiving but this year she’s crazy-crazy.”

Crazy in Love. “Oh?”

“We always stay here but now she’s dragging us to Arizona to see my papa.”

I wish I had backpack straps to grab because this is news to me. Be cool, Joe.

“Well, maybe Phoenix will be fun.”

She just grunts—yeah right. “So what do you do for stupid Thanksgiving?”

Franzen essays and frozen pizza. “I might hop a ferry and volunteer at a soup

kitchen.”

She waves at a woman raking leaves and the woman waves back and we are

normal. This is normal. But then Nomi gives me what the kids call “side eye.”

“but you said you hated the city. You know there’s no soup kitchen here, right?”

“Hate’s a strong word, Nomi. And I like it here, but on a day like that, it’s

nice to get out there and help people in need.”

She just stares ahead. “People never say that love is a strong word.”

Is she high? No. She’s just overdosing on Klebold poems and loneliness. “Huh.

Why do you think that is?”

“Whatever. I’m just annoyed cuz my mom told me not to say I hate her but

she took my Columbine again and I have all these notes in it and I do hate her for

that and dragging us to Phoenix. Anyone would. And don’t tell me she’s just

looking out for me. You’re wrong. She’s a hypocrite. She’s mad because it’s

Columbine. She wouldn’t be mad if I was into some stupid story about horny

babysitters and I’m sorry but Columbine is the best. It is the book.”

And now I miss being a teenager, that salty conviction that you have found

it, the thing that makes your mind make sense to you. You’d want me to be

compassionate, so I tell her I get it, that I too love that book. She just looks at

me. Suspicious Meerkat eyes. And no wonder. Adults lie all the time, but not

this one!

“All right,” I say. “The part that really stuck with me was all the Eric stuff,

fooling his probation officer, how easy it was for him to convince all these so-

called smart adults that he was okay. That’s the problem with this country, the

Injustice System is pretty ineffective.”

I want to talk about incompetent social workers but the Meerkat doesn’t

care about stupid Eric and this is why she doesn’t have friends, because she

doesn’t understand that people take turns. She’s back to ranting about Dylan’s

poems and this is my chance to save her, to help her.

“I get it,” I say, because that’s the first rule of helping any kid. You have to

validate their feelings. “But I think your mom’s upset cuz… well, this therapist I

went to once, he told me that sometimes we all get a mouse in our house.”

“Are you a slob?”

I picture her going home and telling you I have mice. “No,” I say. “See, it’s a

metaphor. The mouse is something you can’t stop thinking about or doing.”

“And the house is your head. Yawn.”

“I know,” I say. “It’s a little simple but the point is that when you get really

into something, it feels good. But it’s not necessarily good for you. I’ve been

there a buncha times.”

She is quiet. Kids are a relief, the way they just shut down and think when

they feel like it. And then she looks at me. “What was your thing?”

Women. Terrible city women. “Well, when I was a kid it was this movie

called Hannah and Her Sisters.”

She turns her nose up at me and oh fuck that’s right. Melanda. “Eew,” she says.

“That’s Woody Allen and he’s on Melanda’s DNW list…”

“Do Not Watch?”

“Yep,” she says. “And he’s at the top. Like the tippity top.”

“Well, your teacher is sure on top of things.”

“She’s more like my aunt.”

Melanda is the mouse in your house. “Well, my point was… that movie was

my Columbine, the thing that changed my life. See, I lived in New York but I

didn’t live in that New York and I wanted to live in that movie. I stole that tape

from Blockbuster, watched it every second I could.”

Nomi responds by repeating that Woody Allen is bad, just like his movie and

I won’t fuck up like I did in the diner. “Okay, but does Melanda think it’s okay

for you to read Dylan Klebold’s poems?”

She growls at the trees above. “There is literally no comparison. He was my

age.”

“Okay… but you have to admit, he did some terrible things… Explain why

you think that’s okay.”

No kid wants a pop quiz and she groans again. “It just is.”

“Look, Nomi.” I am channeling Dr. Nicky. “We got off track. I was just trying

to tell you that it’s not always good to have a mouse in your house, no matter

what the mouse is.”

“Did you really read Columbine? The whole book?”

I’m not RIP Benji and I never lie about books, especially with my potential

stepdaughter. “Yep.”

“Did you also read all the stuff Dylan wrote that’s online?”

Kids do this. They bring it back to them, especially a kid like Nomi, younger

than her age, going to school every day in those glasses—so wrong—and wishing

that some maladjusted boy or girl is writing poems for her but knowing it’s not

possible because she’s watching too closely. She picks at a hangnail. “You know

how he writes a letter to the girl he loves and tells her that if she loves him, she

has to leave a blank piece of paper in his locker?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But he never gave her the letter.”

“But he wrote it,” she says. “And that was sweet.” I hope some exchange

student with buckteeth moves here this year and rocks her world and she

crosses her arms. “Anyway, I’m still not gonna watch a Woody Allen movie.”

“Well, that’s fine. Do what you want.”

“So you don’t care?”

I laugh off the question and maybe I’ll go back to school and become a

guidance counselor. “Look, Nomi. It’s like this. Who cares what Melanda thinks?

Who cares what I think? You only need to decide what you think.”

She kicks a rock. “Well I can’t watch any movie tomorrow anyway cuz we

have our stupid family bonding.”

I’m not a part of your family but I am a part of your family and I force my

voice to be steady, as if I’m asking for directions. “What’s that mean for the

Gilmore Girls?”

“Well, first we oversleep. So we wind up on the eleven o’clock even though

we said we’d take the ten.”

“And then…”

“We take the ferry and walk around and look at tchotchkes.”

“Tchotchkes.”

“We also go to bookstores or whatever, but you know how it is. Mostly

tchotchkes.”

Your desk is crowded with tchotchkes and I laugh. “Yep.”

“Then we go to a restaurant with a long line and my mom is too hungry to

wait and I’m like ‘Just put our name in’ and she won’t do it and then the people

who walked in after us get a table and I’m like ‘See, Mom?’…” You said that she

was the problem and she says that you’re the problem and I can’t wait to be a

part of your fucking family. “And then she wants pizza but then she wants

dumplings and she’s like ‘Oh let’s go to this place I heard about from Melanda.’ ”

I laugh. “Been there.”

“And then we go and the place isn’t open yet cuz she can barely work Yelp

and we just walk around starving and look at more tchotchkes and then she

wants some tchotchke she saw in the morning and she gets paranoid that

someone else got it and we run back to the shop and it’s gone and she’s all

waaah.”

You’re afraid that you’re gonna lose your shot with me and I smile. “Then

what?”

“She still can’t make up her mind about another stupid tchotchke because

that would mean making a decision so we go to a coffee shop and she gets mad

when I take my book out, like we’re supposed to talk all the freaking time. But it’s

BS cuz she’s sick of me too and she takes her book out and then we come home.

And that’s our family bonding. The end.”

I applaud and the Meerkat laughs, but then she turns into a young version of

you, serious. “It’s really not as stupid as it sounds. I’m not mean.”

“You’re not mean. Family is… it’s a lot.”

“It’s just weird to like… try to bond, you know?”

I do know. I remember sitting with Love in prison and trying to feel in love

with her and Nomi’s done with me. “I’m gonna get a coffee first. See ya.”

I wave. “Say hi to your mom.”

She heard my request but she’s already distracted because she ran into my

fecal-eyed neighbors and I can’t rely on Nomi to tell you about our great

conversation. She runs into people all the time because that’s life here and she’s

mad that you took her Columbine away. I walk into the T & C and it’s bustling. I

feel good. I bent the rules and the universe rewarded me, Mary Kay, because

now I know about your plans for tomorrow and I am on board.

It is time for our family to do some fucking bonding.

I know life is ugly. I knew that Bainbridge Island was never going to be exactly

like Cedar Cove. I’m waiting to board the ferry and this guy in line in front of

me is wearing a knit fucking skullcap—someone made it for him, you can just

tell—and yellow-framed sunglasses and he’s rubbing his son in my face, a lesser

Forty with a runny nose. He’s also with his wife, the one who knit that stupid

skullcap and lied to him, told him he can pull off yellow shades. She’s a puffy-

jacket sourpuss and she sniffs her coffee—I think this is oat milk, babe—and I am

alone and they are together and it is absurd.

But not for long, right? Right.

I am taking the 10:00 A.M. ferry to Seattle to get there before you and I’m a

little pushy—Gently, Joseph—but I want to escape from the in-your-face family

that isn’t mine so I move to the left side of the boarding throng into a pack of

lawsuit-hungry retired lawyers just fucking hoping that someone’s landscaper

mows their lawn because it would give them a project. Yes, it’s twee here. If you

go to the police station on your birthday, you get a free donut—you don’t even

have to show ID—but there are twenty-five thousand residents eating locally

farmed beets and commuting to Seattle, forming little commuter cliques.

Debbie Macomber would feel for me, alone on a Saturday, now marooned with

techies talking soccer. I belong nowhere but this is temporary and I’m on board

—that’s progress—and I put on my headphones and break left for the stairs—

two at a time—up to the sundeck. The air helps. The sea, too, a far cry from that

heady brown Malibu foam, and I sit on a bench but I’m faced with a wall clock

covered by a sign that reads I AM BROKEN.

I find another place to sit—gotta be positive—because it’s a big day for us,

Mary Kay. I’m not gonna interrupt your bonding with your daughter and I’m not

“stalking” you. My plan is simple. I’ll have some “me time” and you’ll have your

family time and I’ll watch for the signs; when I notice that the two of you are

getting sick of each other, I’ll “bump into you”—Joe! What a nice surprise!—and

we’ll ride back to the island together. Then, we’ll have dinner at my house. (I

bought salmon steaks and they’re not fucking frostbitten like yours.)

Thanksgiving is five days away and that’s plenty of time for you to cancel your

trip to Phoenix, and you’ll do that after you realize that you can date me and be

a good mom at the same time.

I walk toward the bow, to another bank of benches, and I zip up my jacket.

It’s not freezing, but it isn’t springtime for Hitler and I take off my headphones

because people up here are polite, alone like me. No one is forcing a neighbor to

overhear one side of a cell phone conversation about a busy boring life and I

can’t get that clock out of my head.

I AM BROKEN.

I check Love’s Instagram—I AM NERVOUS—and Forty is biting his nanny

Tressa, who says that my son reminds her of Adam Fucking Levine and Love is

laughing—it isn’t funny—and there is nothing I can do. I delete the fucking app

and shove my phone back in my pocket but then I freeze. I blink. I wish I could

delete my body because what the fuck, Mary Kay?

You’re here. You and Nomi are on this boat, my boat, the one you’re

supposed to miss. You’re thirty feet away and you’re leaning over the railing and

I scoot across the bench, closer to the center of the vessel and I pick up a

newspaper and listen to my heart beat between my ears.

Calm down, Joe. This is like yesterday. If you see me, you see me. It’s fine.

People go to Seattle and I am people. I bend the upper corner of the newspaper

and whoever is driving this ship decides that it’s time to go and we’re on the

move.

You pull a fleece hat out of your saggy, bottomless purse and you offer it to

the Meerkat and she deflects. I can’t hear you, but I see you throw your hands

up and look heavenward—help me, Jesus!—and the Meerkat sulks and stares at

the horizon. You two are off to a rough start and I watched an episode of

Gilmore Girls last night. They needed Luke at times like this and maybe I should

just walk up to you right now and save your morning. I play it out in my head.

Joe, is that you?

Wow! Mary Kay, what a surprise! Do you want to go fuck in the bathroom?

I know. Too much. And the Meerkat might tell you that she told me all

about your plans. Think, Joe, think. If you saw me, you’d come say hi. That’s what

friends do. I’m still in hiding and you haven’t noticed me yet—long live print

newspapers—and the Meerkat leans over the railing. “Ugh,” she shouts. “If you

don’t leave me alone I’m gonna jump, I swear!”

You tell her that’s not funny and she tells you to stop being such a worrywart

and this is adorable—I love our family—and then an oaf in a T-shirt stomps up

the stairs and into the frame and Nomi points at this oaf like she knows him.

“Look at Dad,” she says. “He’s wearing a T-shirt and shorts and he’s fine.”

The word Dad is an iceberg and there is no dad. Dad is gone. Dad isn’t on

your Instagram and Nomi has never said the word Dad and our ship is taking on

water. Fast.

“Hey, Phil,” you say. “Husband of the Year, will you tell your daughter to put

a hat on?”

Dad has a name—it’s Phil—and I am Leo in the ice water, I will freeze to

death on this boat, in this water. The man you call Phil, husband—this is not

happening—he shushes you and our ship is cruising, we are sinking—and he’s a

rock ’n’ roll type of ass and you are Married. Buried.

No, Mary Kay. No.

You don’t have a husband—but you do—and this guy isn’t husband material—

but he is—and he’s not Eddie Vedder and it’s not 1997 so why is he sitting there

with his feet up—Doc Martens—wiping his slimy hands on his Mother Love

Bone T-shirt while he dictates God knows what into his phone? He pecks you

on the cheek—and you let him kiss you—and the ballroom on this boat is

flooded and the water is cold—and you touch him. His face. You casually break

every bone in my body and pull a sweater from your purse.

He won’t take the sweater and I can’t take this. Won’t take this.

Married. Buried.

You must think I’m a moron. The Mothballs didn’t tell me and Melanda

didn’t tell me and Seamus didn’t tell me and your little community is a clique of

mean-spirited liars but fuck me because this is what I get for being Mr. Goody

Two-shoes because since when do I rely on strangers to tell me the truth about

the people I love? You’re married. You really are. He’s whining about your

upcoming trip to Phoenix right now and he sleeps in a bed with you and we

can’t hang out like a family today because he is your fucking family. Not me.

Married. Buried.

He holds up a bag of chips and Nomi claps her hands and I snap a picture of

the motherfucker and there’s a tattoo on his leg and the ink is black: Sacriphil. I

remember that band, barely, one of those nineties, not-quite-Nirvana groups

and WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T I GOOGLE YOU ON DAY FUCKING ONE?

Your husband is an overgrown fan boy in dirty cargo shorts and he has bad

taste in tattoos and he produces another bag of potato chips like some third-

rate magician—I hate magic—and I hate him and right now, worst of all, I relate

to Nomi because I hate you, Mary Kay. You lied to me. You want Phil’s chips

and you wave him on and I remember you in the bathroom of the pub, when

you were mine, when you kissed me. He tosses the chips to you and you catch

the bag like you’re in a bridal party, like it’s a bouquet.

Married. Buried.

This is why you ran away from me and this is why we’ve been treading water

and Nomi screams at the top of her lungs. “Dad! Come look!”

Your husband is an iceberg and I can’t take it anymore. This is the story of

my life. Everything that should be mine, everyone, they’re all snatched away

from me. I lost my son and I’ve tried so hard to be decent. Good. I’ve tried to

forget all the Shel Silverstein poems I memorized when I was incarcerated,

when I thought I’d actually get to be a dad, and now you do the same. You steal

my shot at family and I can’t forgive you, the same way I can’t forget those

fucking poems. You used me, Mary Kay. Love stole my son, but you have stolen

my dignity, my self-respect, and I should have staked out your house the day we

met.

Everything looks different now. You weren’t hazing me at the diner. You

were playing fast and loose, weren’t you? You thought one of your Friends might

say something about your husband in passing. And that’s why you were looking

around in the pub so much on our date. You were afraid we’d get caught. You’re

a dishonest woman. You don’t wear a wedding ring and you criticize your

mother for her sham of a divorce but what the hell do you call this?

Your husband’s angry teenage boy outfit is embarrassing—you must be the

breadwinner—and okay. I never directly asked if you’re married but that’s

because you’re my boss. And okay, it would have been presumptuous of you to

passive-aggressively declare your marital status—So my husband loved the Lisa

Taddeo book—because that’s not your style. But who the fuck are we kidding?

Your husband would never read the Lisa Taddeo book. He’s not a reader. I

can tell and you are right, Mary Kay. We see what we want to see and I didn’t

want to see it. Same way I didn’t want to believe that Love was capable of

stealing my child.

I grab the railing. The ship hasn’t sunk just yet. Yes, you’re married, but if

your marriage was any good, you wouldn’t be so into me. I can still save us. I

google you—I should have done this weeks ago—and there you are, Mary Kay

DiMarco and oh no, oh no. Your husband isn’t a fan of that fucking band. He is

in the band, the lead singer—of course—and Google knows his name because

Phil DiMarco was that guy who sang that song.

You’re the shark inside my shark, you’re the second set of teeth and I just die

underneath.

I’m the one who dies underneath because that’s you on the cover of his album

and the history is sinking in, sinking our ship. Those are your legs under your

black tights and gender-reveal parties are nothing compared to this big reveal—

It’s a dad! It’s a husband! It’s a has-been rock star in shorts!

We’re getting close to the dock and I’m not gonna be intimidated by your

husband. You were his muse and you’re not my muse. I respect you as a person.

And okay, so he was kinda semifamous but he would never be in a clue on

Jeopardy! and I’d rather be your work husband than the husband you loathe so

much that you can’t even speak of him in casual conversation.

He walks up to you and puts his arms around you, and again, the boat is

flooded and the water is cold, but I won’t let it get to me. I will not fucking

freeze to death. You are telling him he needs to put on a sweater—I know you—

and it’s mind-bending to see you like this. Married. Buried. How long did you

think you could get away with this, Mary Kay?

We’re slowing down and you’re searching for something in your purse, and I

bet you’ve been winging it because that’s what you do—Nomi was “the surprise of

your life”—and before I came into your life, you were on cruise control. You

married a music man and I’m sure you loved him at first. You were his tiny dancer

and foxes do like attention—your body parts are on the cover of his album—but

times change. You told me that you never understood why your mother left

your father. You called it a sham divorce. That’s why you’re still in the cage with

Phil. You don’t know how to leave that rat, do you?

Nobody in your family is hungry, but you’re rummaging through your purse.

You pull an Ani Katz book out of your purse—I told you to read that one!—and

you pause. You’re thinking about me. You want me. And then you shove it back

in your purse and I feel guilty because you must be constantly worried about

what happens when the book is out of the bag, when I find out about your life,

when Phil finds out about me.

Your rat groans. “Emmy, stop it already, man. We’re not starving to death.”

“No,” you say. “I know I have a candy bar. It’s in here somewhere.”

You and I are the same, aren’t we? We sacrifice our feelings and our desires

for the people we love. The Meerkat is annoyed—Forget it, Mom—and Phil is

disinterested—Em, I’m gonna eat with Freddy. But you’re still looking for it,

determined to provide for your family, and then you prevail and wave a 3

Musketeers bar in the air.

“Got it!”

It’s impossible not to love you right now, the sheer joy on your face, the win.

You bite the wrapper of the candy bar that you knew was in your purse and you

are the girl who dreamed up the Empathy Bordello. You care about everyone

and that includes your rat husband. You tear the candy bar in half and I love

you for the big things and the little things, the pleasure you take in sharing. But

there’s a fine line between selfless devotion and self-destruction and you give

one half of your 3 Musketeers to Nomi and the other half to Phil and what’s left

for you?

We disembark and I stay out of the way and let you and your family cross

the bridge into the city while I take the stairs down to the street. I watch Phil

wave goodbye to you and the Meerkat and of course this rat stayed with you—

who would leave you?—and you couldn’t leave him. He’s too pathetic, exposing

his legs so that everyone can see his Sacriphil tattoo. You stayed because it

wouldn’t be fair for Phil to fail as a rock star and a husband.

And I didn’t see any of it coming.

I got soft when I moved here, trying so hard to be “good” as if being good is

ever that simple. Life is complicated. Morals are complicated. I wouldn’t even be

here today if I hadn’t bent the rules. I slip into a tourist trap restaurant—I really

do prefer our small-town life—and I order a cup of coffee and begin my work.

Your husband’s band is in shambles but he “works” nights hosting his own radio

show called Philin’ the Blues—ugh—and if he’s up all night, well, I bet you haven’t

had sex in a long time.

He doesn’t care about you, not really. The man lives his life for his fans—they

call themselves Philistans—and he encourages these loud, lost losers to keep on

rooting for a Sacriphil comeback. Our world is fucked—Phil has fans—and your

life is fucked—Phil has you—but now that I’m indoors, on my own, I don’t feel

so bad about any of it. I’m happy that the jig is up. We’re not teenagers and I

have no interest in love triangles—never did—and I’m a New Yorker, Mary Kay.

I’ve dealt with rats all my life. It’s nothing personal. I don’t “hate” them. But rats

carry diseases and you’re in luck because I know how to get rid of them.

I go to the rat’s YouTube channel. I only know the song about the shark,

Sacriphil’s legitimate hit. But it’s time to get into the liner notes, the deep tracks

that tell your story. The first song at the top of the page is ten minutes and

thirty-two seconds long—gimme a fucking break—and it’s called “Dead Man

Running,” and oh Phil, my man, don’t you worry.

Your time has come.

In the sixth grade there was this kid in my class named Alan Brigseed.

Obviously they called him Alan Badseed and he was portly. Walked with a limp

because of an issue with his bones. Wore football jerseys to school every single

day and was determined to be a quarterback for the Giants. Real life isn’t Rudy

and back then I knew that poor Alan Badseed would wind up working at a

Dick’s Sporting Goods in New Jersey—I was right—and two years ago, poor

Alan Badseed died in his mother’s basement while he was jerking off.

Your husband reminds me of Alan, Mary Kay. I spent the past thirty-six

hours learning everything there is to know about Phil DiMarco. I read every

profile. I watched every ancient on-screen interview where he talks over the

other guys in his band. I dug into the Philin’ the Blues archives and I went on his

Twitter—he doesn’t understand hashtags and writes Peace# at the end of every

tweet—and most of his followers are aging dope whores—apologies to dope and

prostitutes—and they tag him in pictures of their implants and sometimes he

likes those pictures and do you know about this? Or did you just stop caring a

long time ago?

Like Alan Brigseed, Phil won’t give up the dream. And like Alan Brigseed,

Phil would be better off dead. He doesn’t work. He makes pennies hosting his

graveyard-shift radio show—it’s a glorified infomercial—five nights a week and

okay, so he does make good money on royalties, it’s one of his favorite subjects

on the Blues, but it’s a little less every year. There are few things more tragic

than a man hell-bent on becoming something he just can’t be. You probably

expected more “Sharks” to come along, but like so many artists, that was the

best Phil had in him.

He was famous for a second. And fame is poison.

Rock star fame is especially vile. It’s a drop of food coloring and one drop—

one innocent hungry shark in the water—is enough to turn all the clear water

red and make it stay that way. Every Sacriphil album is less successful than the

one before and it’s some Edgar Allan Poe shit, Mary Kay, the slow demise of his

falling, rising star, the way he fights it every night on the air, gaslighting

Philistans, raging against the industry, thanking you for saving his life as he

blames you for domesticating him. He plays his part well, claiming that he put his

“art” in the backseat so he could throw his soul into being a dad. In reality, Phil

just fucking failed. The turnover rate in his band is high—scary high—and if he

managed a Dunkin’ Fucking Donuts he would have been fired because of his

inability to play well with others.

I turn on the heat in my car. It’s cold tonight and I’m parked outside of your

rat’s recording studio. I bent the rules for us and bent rules are meant to be

broken. I brought two Rachael Ray knives and Phil’s untimely death won’t

tarnish Bainbridge’s reputation as a safe haven. He’s just famous enough to be a

wild card and when an early morning jogger finds him on the street tomorrow,

it will seem like the work of a Philistan gone crazy, karmic payback after years of

getting close with his fans, following them back on Twitter, encouraging them

to pop by and hang. The cops might also think it’s a drug deal gone bad because

I’ve also learned that your husband is in recovery. I listened to every song he

ever wrote and I’m sorry to say it, but you are nothing compared to his true

love: heroin.

I know it all, Mary Kay. I know that you had to “downsize” a few years ago—

it’s all so fucking relative—and move to what Phil calls your sellout, suit-and-tie

saltbox in Wesley Landing. He is pretty funny, I’ll give him that, but the

privilege of it all! Like he deserves a Led Zeppelinesque castle in the woods

because he has one song that some people know by heart. I’m so happy I’m not

famous. And I have a whole new outlook on you.

You got together with Phil in high school. He was in a band. You were into

that.

You got pregnant in college. He put a needle in his arm and penned the best

songs of his life.

You were his muse and then when he couldn’t pull off the magic again, you

were the one he blamed.

You’re his mother. You’re his babysitter. You’re his enabler.

But tonight, I set you free.

It’s 4:00 a.m. and Phil’s awfully lonely—oh how he would hate that reference!—

and I should get out of my car, walk inside, and end his life once and for all. I

grip the handle of the knife.

I turn up the volume on Phil’s swan song—sorry, man—and my timing is

good, Mary Kay. The poor guy is really going off the rails tonight, ranting about

Lucky Kurt Cobain.

As always, his mouth is too close to the mic. “It’s true, man…” His voice isn’t

what it used to be. “Nirvana is Nirvana because Courtney killed Kurt. And

when you’re a guy like me, a survivor… well, we worship the dead. We put ’em

on pedestals. Music just sounds better when the singer’s a goner and it’s the story

of a lot of artists… you die, you’re not around to feel the love, and here comes

the love.”

He talks as if Kurt Cobain wasn’t a star before he died and maybe I won’t

have to kill Phil. Maybe there’s an angry mob on the way right now and I check

the rearview. Nothing. And of course there’s no angry mob. I’m one of ten,

maybe twelve, people listening at this late, early hour.

“Aw, man,” he says. “I’m not bitter…” Oh yes you are, man. “But there was this

one night me and Chris were jammin’…” Impossible to verify. Chris Cornell is

dead. “I had this riff… he riffed on the riff… and let’s just say, a cowriting credit

on ‘Black Hole Sun’ woulda been nice…” I grip my knife because you do not

speak ill of the dead, but then he growls. “Shut it, Phil! Don’t be a whiny little

bitch!” He opens a can of beer. “Thing is, I’m not a pretty boy and if I looked a

little more like cutesy-tootsie Eric Clapton…” Oh dear no. No. “Did you guys see

that doc about him? I caught it this afternoon when I was half asleep…” What a

good partner for you, Mary Kay! “Man, Crapton works that schoolboy charm

hard…” True. “But the guy could be a real fucking dick…” Also true. “He’d get

nasty and drunk onstage. He went after his best friend’s girl… and did people

hate him for it? Nah. He rode the horse into hell, he couldn’t finish Layla, and

Duane Fucking Allman rode into that hellscape like a white knight and he’s the

reason we have ‘Bell Bottom Blues.’ Some guys, they inspire that loyalty in

people. When it comes to me… well, no one ever bailed me out…” Oh dear.

“Chris wouldn’t come by while I was trying to finish The Terrible Twos…”

I scroll down the Wikipedia page and there it is, the third album: The Terrible

Twos. Don’t put the word terrible in your title, Phil. It’s just too easy for the

critics to slaughter you.

He analyzes his fizzling career—a good marriage is a tough thing to write about

—and I revisit one of my favorite interviews with Phil. Nomi was two years old.

Phil was out of rehab, once again, withdrawing from the pink cotton wool (he

stole that metaphor from Eric Fucking Clapton). Anyway, Phil compared you to

his Gibson—you are not an instrument—and said he could stay clean for the

rest of his life if he got to play with you every day. The reporter told you what

your husband said and your response was telling: “It’s not what you expect when

you’re a muse… but what can you do?”

Spoken like a true battered, trapped woman, and I read the lyrics from

“Waterbed,” the fourth track on Moan and Groan.

I gave you what you want, it’s a waterbed

I’m seasick for you, will you gimme head?

Why take ’em off if you won’t give it up?

Why lay down if I’m not enough?

You weren’t his muse. You were his whipping post and you’re ashamed, aren’t

you? You were young, Mary Kay. I made mistakes too—RIP Candace—but I

didn’t marry my mistake. I know, I know. You were pregnant and he wrote his

twisted love letters about his fear of commitment when he was young too. But

then I turn his show back on and he’s digging deep into the past as always,

blasting the pity-party dirge he calls “Sharp Six.”

Aw you got to do it, MAN

You mute her scream with a RING, they command

A Hustler… You want it

It’s at the newsstand…

Summer comes in like a FIRE and it goes

And where she WENT you don’t know

Her body… You want it

But now it’s out of reach…

The alarm cuts you UP at sharp six

You’re just another TOM, you’re a Dick

Your Philstick… It’s broken

She burnt your wick…

You wake up in a CRATE and you’re dead

She’s in a BARREL in your bed

A crate in a barrel… A barrel in a gun…

Remember… the summer…

The end of all the fun…

The barrel of a gun (Repeat 10x)

The song ends and he cackles. “Man,” he says. “Was I some kinda prick or

what?”

Okay, so he regrets the lyrics. But he still plays the song. A Better Man like

Eddie Vedder would bury those hateful, sexist words, but Phil is no Eddie

Vedder and this most hateful album is also the most popular. “Well, Philistans, I

gotta drain the lizard.”

He’s a liar and he doesn’t need to take a piss. He cracks a window and he

smokes a cigarette—I bet that’s not allowed—and he stares at the building

across the street and the playlist is a brainwashing exercise. He plays a go-

nowhere Sacriphil B-side between bigger songs by Mudhoney and the Melvins as

if we, the listener, are supposed to think Phil and his cronies are in the same

league as those legends, as if we the listener are that fucking stupid.

“Well,” he says. “Phil’s back and ya know, every time I hear ‘Shark,’ I gotta

give a shout-out to my girls at home. You all know that I’m nothing without

them. Hell, sometimes I think, What if Emmy never got pregnant… I wouldn’t

have my daughter or my ‘Shark.’ ”

He “loves” you but you don’t love him. When you love someone, you scream

it from the rooftops but you don’t even wear a ring and the Meerkat doesn’t talk

about him either. Your friends don’t ask about him. You think leaving him

would kill him, push him off the wagon, and you’re trapped in this codependent

cycle of abuse and he sighs. “All right, Philistans. Fun fact…” Fact as in fiction.

“First time I played ‘Shark’ for Kurt, he tucked his hair behind his ear and said

he wished he wrote it. I got the chills, man.” BULLSHIT, YOU LIAR. RIP

KURT WOULD NEVER. “Maybe that’s why ‘Shark’ is still burnin’ after all

these years and ya gotta forgive me, my moon’s blue tonight…” Oh God. “I know

Kurt’s a god. You know Kurt’s a god. He fell for a Courtney and I fell for my girl

and… well, I’m still here. I got another ‘shark’ in me. You know it. I know it.

Peace out, Philistans, and to all my NA brothers and sisters, I’ll bump into you

tomorrow.”

He plays “Shark” at the end of every fucking episode and I hate that I love

this song. In theory, it should suck, guitars on top of bass and I forgot about the

cowbell and young Phil wails, before cigarettes got the best of his voice, singing

at you, at me, at everyone on the planet.

You are the shark inside my shark, you’re the second set of teeth

The roses ain’t in bloom, the thorns hide in the wreath

On my front door you bang and bang, let me in, lock me out

You hang me up, I twist, you shout

Eat me, bite me, slay me, spite me

Your body invites me and your fire ignites me and

Why are you the flame (the only one to blame, you and your game)

You swell and hide and now you lock me in this frame

Where I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I just die underneath

Cuz I’m the shark inside your shark, oh I’m the second set of teeth…

I kill the volume but I have no choice. I have to finish. I have to sing the rest.

You’re the shark inside my shark but I’m the shark inside your shark

You’re me, I’m you. What can we do? You’re me, I’m you

You gnash, I feed… you and your seed…

But do you want me in your dreams?

Do you love me when I’m clean?

Do you hear me when I—

(Cowbell)

SHARK!

It’s Rhyming for Dummies and it’s a jumbled mess of mixed metaphors but he

was smart to end it with another displaced cowbell and I bet you knew that

song was gonna be big. I look at your legs on his album. You want me to think

you stayed for Nomi, but everything looks different now that I know about your

rat. You like being a muse. You still wear your signature tights every day and his

music comes from you. Just once I’d like to fall for someone who isn’t

handicapped by narcissism, but it’s too late. I love you. I can’t kill his success,

but I can pick up my knife.

Your rat he turns out the lights and walks down the stairs and there he is,

thirty feet away, on the sidewalk. He leans against the building the same way he

does on the cover of his hit single, posing for a camera that isn’t there and he

lights a Marlboro Red like he’s James Fucking Dean, like his imaginary Philistans

will summon the courage to emerge from the shadows. He blows smoke rings

and watches them fade into the halogen mist and I don’t know how to blow

smoke rings. Do you like that, Mary Kay? Are you into that kind of shit?

I slip Rachael up my sleeve and I’m ready but he pulls a rabbit out of his

sleeve. His phone is ringing and he takes the call and it’s you.

“Emmy,” he says. “Babe, you okay? Why you up?”

I let the knife fall out of my sleeve. You’re awake. You were listening. I don’t

call you Emmy and he says it too many times—Emmy Emmy Emmy—and he

swears that he got a lot of sleep today—lazy fucker—and he tells you that he’s

gonna go write through the sunrise—oh fuck you, Phil—before he hits a

meeting. He swears he’ll pack his own shit for Phoenix—liar—and he chucks his

cigarette in a puddle. “I’m down to two packs a day, Emmy. And now you want

me to quit for a week for your dad? Are you trying to make me fall off the

wagon? Is that what you want?”

I don’t know what you’re saying. He doesn’t know either because he holds the

phone away. But he must be able to hear a little because he takes a deep breath

and cuts you off.

“Emmy, Emmy, Emmy. Relax. For the nine millionth time… it’s a show. It’s an

act. The label likes my attitude and Nomi’s friends… they’re not up listening to

me. Stop caring about what other people think…” I wish I could hear you.

“Emmy, Nomi doesn’t give a shit if I go to Phoenix and I told you, I’m going. You

win again, babe!… What is with you, lately? What is it?” Me. It’s me! “Christ,

woman, I’m missing a whole week of shows and still you’re bitching at me. What

the hell more do you want from me?” You might be crying. Or apologizing. He

rubs his forehead. “Emmy. Baby, come on. Don’t do that. You know I love you

too.”

My blood runs cold. Hot. No.

He gets into his jalopy and turns on one of his own unknown songs and I let

go of my knife. Love you too means that you said I love you. I turn on my car, I

blast my Prince, but “When You Were Mine” can’t silence the shark inside my

shark.

You love him. You do.

It’s a miserable drive home—A crate in a barrel, a barrel in a gun—and I shove

Rachael into the glove compartment. This is worse than RIP Beck and RIP

Benji. They didn’t have a child and twenty fucking years together. I have to be

smart about this. Yeah, I want Phil gone. But the real problem is you, Mary Kay.

In your own stunted adolescent, nurturing, self-destructive, misguided

maternal, codependent way… you really do love your husband. I can run him off

the road, but that would be dangerous. It might even make things worse. I need

help—Hey Siri, how do you kill love?—but who am I kidding? She doesn’t know.

No one knows. I have to figure it out myself, alone, while you’re in Phoenix

carving turkeys and reinforcing your dysfunctional family bonds.

I drive to Taco Bell. I can have anything I want, but all I want is you, so I get

one of everything.

Happy Early Fucking Thanksgiving to me.

It’s the most… horrible time… of the year—mid-fucking-December—and we’re in a

rut. As it turns out, you’re not just beholden to your husband. You’re also

responsible for your dad. You were only supposed to be in Phoenix for a week,

but the day after Thanksgiving, your father fell down the stairs. The Mothball

Howie Okin knows more about your father’s health than I do—we have to fix

that—and Howie informed me that your dad has an osteochondral lesion, which is

Howie-speak for a hole in his bone. Being the good daughter that you are, you

put your rat and your Meerkat on a plane and you stayed with your dad to help

him move into a new house and I don’t begrudge you for helping the old man.

I’m not a what about me asshole, but your dad isn’t the only one in pain. I have a

cardiochondral lesion, Mary Kay. You don’t call. You barely text. Time drags and

time flies—November already turned into December—and I walk outside to get

the paper and fecal-eyed Nancy is hammering a wreath onto her front door. She

doesn’t wave and I don’t wave and WHEN THE FUCK ARE YOU COMING

HOME, MARY KAY?

I have been so good. I didn’t kill Phil. I’ve “processed” my feelings about your

secret life. I’ve given you “space.” And on the rare occasion that you do text me, I

don’t harp on you about your return. I asked you exactly once and your response

was infuriating. Soonish, I guess, I think.

Soonish (adj) FUCKING BULLSHIT, MARY KAY

But I’m just as bad at long-distance relationships. I look at the text I sent you

last night.

Me: How ya doin’?

I couldn’t have done any worse and I know it. You are not ya and it’s a dorky,

broad question, the kind of whining you don’t need right now and I pour Rice

Chex into a bowl. I try to read the paper but I don’t want any more bad fucking

news. I go to Love’s Instagram—I am acing Holiday Induced Self Destruction 101

—and I watch my son whip his arm with another early “prezzie,” a plastic

fucking sword and this is no good either so I get up. I put on your favorite black

cashmere sweater and the sweater and I go outside and get into my ice-cold car.

Nancy’s husband is in his car, too, warming up the Land Rover for his wife, per

usual. I half-wave at him and he pretends he doesn’t see me—Happy Christmas to

you too, asshole—and Nancy swans out of their house. She’s on the phone—Yes,

Mom, but we need a fuller tree for our e-card photo—and I feel like the human

equivalent of a fucking e-card, destined for an e–trash bin. Nancy gets into her

nice warm car and she loves her husband and he loves her (maybe) and he’s a

tool. She’s a tool. But they have each other and you won’t even tell me how

you’re doin’.

I hit the road and lower the volume on “Holly Jolly Christmas” because you

haven’t called me once since you’ve been gone. (So much for Friends.) I bet you

call your rat husband and my phone buzzes—did you read my mind?—but no.

You didn’t. It’s just Shortus. He wants to grab a beer again—CrossBores are not

impervious to the holiday blues—and I won’t waste another night with him. He

doesn’t know shit about you—he’s not your Friend either—and all he really

wants to do is bitch about all the presents he has to buy for his girls in the shop.

Halfway to the library, I slow down—I am in no rush for my daily

disappointment—and I check your Instagram—nothing—and I proceed to my

happy place, which is, oddly enough, your husband’s fucking Twitter account.

His tweets give me hope. Patience. They got me through the first week of your

exodus because he spent his time with you whining about… being with you.

Hey @SeaTacAirport if I go postal it’s on you with the xmas tunes. Peace#

Thanksgiving is the opposite of rock n roll. Peace#

Hey Phoenix. Smoking is legal. Deal with it. Peace#

My sponsor chose the wrong day to lose his cell phone. InLaws# SendHelp#

The wife let me out of my cage. Check me out at @copperblusPHX if you want to hear some REAL

music. I’ll sign your tits AND your T-shirts JK just the shirts, ladies. Whipped# Peace#

Phil is a sad sack and I have to stay positive, Mary Kay. You were probably

happy about the hole in your dad’s bone because it meant that you got a break

from Phil. He’s so transparent. Yeah, he boasted about his show, but the show

must have been a total bust because he didn’t post a single picture with a single

fan, let alone a woman with tits. Even better, your rat appeared in exactly zero

of your staged family photos with the Meerkat… but that’s nothing new. The rat

never appears in your photos, presumably because he has some rule about

tarnishing his image, because he wants people to picture young Phil. (Say what

you will about drugs, but the lifestyle agreed with him and I get why he’s been

TBT1997# ever since he and the Meerkat got back from Phoenix. The man was at

his best when he was high as fuck and skinny as a rail and he’s no George

Clooney, Mary Kay. He doesn’t get better with age.)

Someone behind me beeps and I wave—sorry!—and “My Sweet Lord” comes

on the radio as I pull into the parking lot and Hallefuckinglujah. You’re here. I

wore your favorite sweater—yes!—and I want out of this car and into your orbit

so badly that I trip on black ice. Breathe, Joe, breathe. I don’t want to die, not

now, before we’ve christened the Red Bed—ho ho ho—so I take big, cautious

steps and I enter the library and you are tan and your cheeks are fuller than they

were a month ago and I like you like this. Nourished. Bronzed. Here.

I wave at you. Totally normal. “Welcome back!”

You raise a hand. Robot stiff. As if I never touched your Lemonhead. “Hi,

Joe. Hope you had a good holiday. Dolly’s in History and we’re pretty backed

up.”

That’s it? That’s all I get?

Yes. Yes, it is. You’re already hiding in your computer and I follow your

orders and plod to History and I’m worried about you, Mary Kay. Did your rat

catch you gazing longingly at the Bruce Springsteen lyrics I posted, the ones you

liked at 2:14 A.M. Phoenix time? I know you can’t hug me but it’s me. It’s you.

Don’t you want to know how I’m doin’?

The day is flying by and soonish, it’s time for lunch, but you eat alone in your

office with Whitney and Eddie. I should be in there with you, catching up,

reminding you of what it’s like to be with me, but I can’t push. I have to

remember that you’ve had no privacy for several weeks. You were drowning in

dirty dishes and Nomi’s anxiety about her college applications—her first pick is

NYU, thanks, Instagram!—and then you were the dutiful daughter. This isn’t

about me. Right now, you’re making up for lost solitude.

I take my lunch break in the garden because it’s cold but it’s not New York

City cold and finally, here you are, rubbing your shoulders. No jacket.

“Aren’t you freezing?”

I swallow the beef in my mouth. “Nah,” I say. “Hey, how was your trip? How’s

your dad?”

Now would be a good time for you to tell me about the other dad in your life

but you don’t. “My dad’s much better, thank you, so that’s a relief… And at least

we had a nice Thanksgiving before he fell…” Your holiday was not nice, Mary

Kay. You and the Meerkat looked like marionettes with guns behind your backs

in your family photos. “Anyway,” you say, as if I’m just another Mothball. “How

about you? Did you have a good holiday?”

The worst part about holidays is the way people talk about them when

they’re over and you know what I did on Thanksgiving. You saw my pictures.

You liked them. I follow you and you follow me and the rules of Genesis are like

the rules of jinx. I am allowed to call you out. “Well, as you saw, it was mostly

me and some books, which is to say it was perfect.”

You look down at your lap. “I told my dad about you.”

I put down my fork. You love me, more than you did a month ago. “Oh,

really?”

“Yeah… I don’t think I ever spent that much time alone with him. I kept

thinking that you two would really get along…”

You missed me and I smile. “I’m just glad he’s okay. I read about

osteochondral lesions. They sound tough.”

I am such a good fucking guy! I don’t make it about me and you’re talking

lesions and moving trucks and I’m here for all of it and then you touch your

hair. You want to make it about me. “You really would like my dad, Joe. He’s old

school, obsessive about his books, all of his Tom Clancys lined up in

alphabetical order. He airs them out and wipes them down them once a week.

All these years, I never knew that about him. I thought you’d get a kick out of

it.”

I feel for you, Mary Kay. I thought I suffered. But you were forced to be

inside of your marriage for a solid week. You played nurse. You dealt with a

move and how did you get through it? You daydreamed about me. You stored up

anecdotes for me and now you feed them to me and I’m happy that you didn’t

tell me how you’re doin’ in a stupid text. Sometimes you love someone so much

that you can’t bear a taste or a text because only this kind of moment will do.

Shared air. Stillness on a love seat. Your silence is heavy with what you don’t

say, that you want me to be with you the next time you fly away. I love that you

love me. I love that you came out into the cold to see me and we do belong

together, but not like this. Married. Buried.

I close the lid on my box of beef and broccoli. “Hey,” I say. “Do you mind if I

cut out early?”

It’s fun to watch you fight the devastation in your body. “Big plans tonight?”

I remember Phil’s first tweet today: Xmas lights. Why? No. Aren’t we over this?

IsItJanuaryYet# Peace#

“Well, I special-ordered Christmas lights last month…” It’s not a lie. It’s a

pre-truth. “It’s kind of embarrassing but I love to string lights.”

I am the anti-Phil and I am your light. “That’s so great.”

“Lights are a more-is-more situation, you know?”

You squeeze your paper cup. I know it’s hard, being with the wrong person

when the right person is right here.

I make a pit stop at Cooley Hardware to pick up lights and luck is on my

side—No Seamus!—and I get home and there’s a box on my front porch. My

serotonin surges and Jeff Bezos is a rich man because he knows how much we all

just love to get a present, even if it’s a present we bought for ourselves.

I hang my lights—take that, Phil—and I go inside, down to my Whisper

Room. I open my present to myself, but it’s really a present for you: Basic Text,

6th edition. Author: Narcotics Anonymous.

I’m reading Phil’s bible for the same reason that you dipped your toes in the

Cedar Cove series after we first spoke on the phone. You wanted to know what

I’m all about. You wanted to speak my language. I don’t need a fucking self-help

book, Mary Kay, but I will do whatever it takes to help you to follow your

fucking heart and end your dead marriage. It’s the giving season and tonight, I

bequeath my time to you, to us.

I want to write to Dr. Nicky and tell him to read the Basic Text because it made

me realize what we had in common way back when: addiction to toxic women.

I was up all night and my eyes are bloodshot and puffy—perfect—and I

choose an old sweater. Lucky for me, your husband likes to tweet about his NA

meetings so I’m here, in the parking lot of Grange Hall. I will meet your

husband and pretend to be a fellow addict slash Sacriphil super fan boy. My plan

is simple in theory—befriend him, needle him about his failure to produce

another “Shark,” make him become the worst possible version of himself and

undo everything he learned from his “bible.” When I’m in Phil’s head, when he’s

in peak monster woulda-coulda-shoulda-been-and-still-could-if-not-for-the-

damn-family mode, well, you’ll have no choice but to end your sham marriage. If

I do a good job, you’ll watch Phil come to terms with the fact that he’s not a

fucking husband and he’s not a fucking father.

He’s a fucking rock star, man.

And you’ll feel justified in leaving him. But if I fuck up…

I light another Marlboro Red and I’m pacing the way addicts do before they

go to a first meeting. This is risky. You could find out what I’m up to, but you

started this, Mary Kay. You didn’t tell me about him and the best Christmas

gifts never come easy. If and when the three of us are in the same room, I’ll tell

you the truth, that I went to a meeting for the same reason a lot of people who

aren’t addicts go to these meetings: It was the holidays. I was lonely.

Right now, I have to focus on the mission, like a dad driving all over the city

to find that stupid fucking Cabbage Patch Kid. I hear Sacriphil music in the

distance and it’s him. He’s in his jalopy and he’s pulling into the parking lot,

rocking out to his own song. I breathe. I can do this. Christmas is about miracles

and transformation—Hi, I’m Jay and I’m addicted to heroin—and Phil gets out of

his jalopy and I run through Jay’s story: I hurt my back in a car accident, got

Oxy, got hooked on Oxy, tried heroin cuz it was cheaper and yesterday… well, I

won’t tell my story today—this is one of those less is more situations—but a good

actor prepares and the Basic Text has good advice for all of us: Find new

playgrounds. Find new playthings.

Here comes my plaything now, still a little porky and sunburnt from his time

in Phoenix. I freeze up like a starfucker and stare at him as I try not to stare at

him. That’s Phil DiMarco! Look at him open the door! Stars: They’re just as

fucked up as us! He disappears into the building and I cough all that crap out of

my lungs and pat down my mothy sweater. This is it. I’m going in.

My new playground is smaller than I expected: There are two rich ladies—one

likes Kahlúa, one likes Percocets—a couple of court-ordered resentful old rich

people, and a trio of court-ordered teens. A friendly thirtysomething woman

picks up a glazed donut. “Hey,” she says. “You ever go to this meeting before?”

“No,” I say. “You?”

She smirks. She wears two diamond engagement rings—Jesus—and she nods

at your husband who is on the other side of the room, just as bombastic in

person as he is on his infomercial. He points at his freshly shaven face, laughing

at his own terrible joke. “Ya get it, man? I shaved the beard and now it’s growing

on me!”

“Fair warning,” says the woman with two diamonds. “Some people in this

group like to talk. A lot. But hey, at least it’s not boring.”

Soon we’re taking our seats and the rat is so close and the spirit of Christmas

is alive in me—it is the most wonderful time of the year—and I introduce myself

—my voice is shaky but that’s normal—and nobody pushes me to spill my guts.

Good.

Mrs. Kahlúa talks about how much she loves Kahlúa, how hard it is to go to

holiday parties, and Princess Percocets gripes about her self-righteous daughter,

and finally, your rat raises his hand. “Can I butt in?”

He rubs the back of his grimy head and takes a long, ten-months-pregnant

kind of pause and I try not to picture you on top of him, grabbing his hair until

he finally cuts into all that overblown, selfish silence he imposed on us. “So the

wife finally got back from Thanksgiving. Felt like she was gone forever.” No shit,

Shercock, but this is pretty exciting. I get to hear Phil’s side of the story, a side

even you don’t get to see. “But it’s like we’re right back to fighting the way we

were in Phoenix. It was rough. Thing One was in a mood, man.” I know we can’t

name names but seriously, Phil? Thing One. “Me and Thing Two… we couldn’t do

right by her…” Thing Two is Nomi but Nomi is not a thing. “Thing One was all

over Thing Two about some book she’s reading…” Oh come on, Phil, the book is

Columbine. “And she was all over me about my cigs.” Cigs. “I’m not gonna say that

cigarettes are good for you, but you know what else isn’t good for you? Being

nagged.”

I start to clap and stop. Starstruck. Fan boy. Phil winks. Thanks, man.

“Thing One’s got daddy issues but lately it’s outta control…” I’ve made you

think about things, Mary Kay. I’ve made you grow. “The whole damn week, she’s

on me to participate in the family. I try to ‘participate,’ man, I do. A local bar

invites me to play…”

Bullshit. He tweeted that bar and four other bars. He invited himself.

“I score us a table and they’re cool with my kid and Thing One flies off the

handle. We don’t want to go to a bar! My dad can barely walk right now! Thing Two is

seventeen! Man, I know I’m not supposed to say it…” Say it, Phil. Say it! “But

Thing One… she botched the turkey, she can’t stay off Instagram and for

someone who loves to read so much… well she ain’t reading lately…”

You love me too much to concentrate and soon, we’ll be on my sofa reading

together.

“And Thing Two is seventeen going on twelve. She needs to grow up… All

she does is ride her bike around on her own in la-la land…” Phil shakes his head.

“We used to be a dynasty… I was her king. She was my queen. We were heroes…”

Another pregnant pause and the woman with two rings bites her lip. She’s not

alone. Your poor husband is a recurring joke, Mary Kay. “I didn’t cave,” he says.

“But the thing is… yes, I fucking did cave, man. I didn’t get to play for a whole

week.” Lie. “I know I’ve said it before…” Say it again. Please. “But man, is this it?

Is this my life?” He shakes it off. “Never mind,” he says. “You’d have to be in my

shoes to… Never mind.”

The woman with two diamonds starts talking about her two engagements

and Phil isn’t listening. He takes his phone out and he’s typing and tapping his

foot and is he… is he trying to turn this woman’s sob story into a song right in

front of her? I want to call 911 and report a theft but the meeting is ending and

it’s time to mingle and I’m nervous again. We’re milling around, eating more

donuts, and your rat heads outside and if I want your present to be ready for

Christmas, I have to do this.

I put down my donut. I chase your rat.

He’s on the way to his car and I’m catching up and I can do this. I am JAY

ANONYMOUS: SACRIPHIL FAN BOY. I clear my throat—nervous, he’s a

rocker—and I scratch my head—nervous, he’s your husband—and he opens the

door and I fake a stumble—ouch—and he looks over his shoulder and laughs at

me, just a little, and I apologize, just a little, and I pull out a Marlboro Red and

I’m stuttering when I begin my first official outreach to the Phil DiMarco.

“ ’Scuse me,” I say. “Do you… Do you have a light?”

He leans against his car like he did in the promo photos for Moan and Groan

and I wish I was wearing a Sacriphil T-shirt but what can I say, Mary Kay? It’s a

busy time of year and last-minute shopping is tough.

“Hey, man,” he says. “You all right?”

I nod, too starstruck to speak, and he passes me his lighter—Zippo with a

naked girl, what a good dad—and I drop it on the pavement and he picks it up

and lights my cigarette and thank God you can’t see us right now. I look at him

like he’s the Arc of the Fucking Covenant and I breathe in, out. “Wow,” I say.

“I’m having a butt with Phil DiMarco.”

His face is a Shrinky Dink in the oven, expanding, brightening. “Oh shit,” he

says. “We got us a Philistan.”

“I’m so sorry. Shit. I know we’re not supposed to use our names.”

“Nah, man, it’s cool.”

“I had to come up to you, man. The whole time in there, I was like, I can’t

move, I can’t breathe, I just die underneath!” He likes to be quoted—all writers are

pathetic that way—and he laughs and this is painful, but this is the only way for

me to get you what you really want: me. “I thought I was tripping. Phil

DiMarco, the most horrifically underrated rock star of all time, is ten feet away

from me and man, I’m just… man.” I drop my cigarette—nerves on top of nerves

—and he offers me one of his and I take it. “I can’t believe I’m smoking a butt

with Phil DiMarco.”

“You’re hard-core,” he says. “What about you? You got a name?”

“Jay,” I say, happy I worked so hard on my character.

He hawks a loogie on the pavement. “No worries,” he says. “It’s not like you’re

blowing my cover. Everyone knows who I am. What’s your name again?”

I literally just said it but then again he doesn’t even know the name of his

daughter’s favorite book. “I’m Jay,” I say. “Jesus Christ, man. What are you even

doing here?”

“Same thing you are, man. Day by day.”

“But you’re you. I mean… come on. You don’t need this. That shit you said

about Phoenix. How do you even stand it?”

He chuckles. “Yeah, Phoenix sucked.”

“See, what you said in there made me think. A few years back, you told Mojo

that you couldn’t go six hours without touching a guitar…” I smile. “Or getting

laid.”

He laughs at his own old bad joke. “Well, that was then, man. Things

change.”

He doesn’t really think things change and he’s right. They don’t. I smoke my

butt and I hope I don’t get cancer from these fucking things. I can’t stand the

idea of dying before you, leaving you here to miss me. He blows a smoke ring

and I try and fail—perfect—and I ash on a pile of old freebie newspapers

because he ashed on it first but that’s a fire hazard, Mary Kay. Your husband is a

fire hazard.

“So,” I say. “Can I ask… Are you working on anything now?”

“Hell yeah,” he says. “Always.”

“Good, cuz I am dying for a new album. And a tour. People say it’s not gonna

happen… I’m like fuck yes it is. Phil DiMarco is gonna come back in a big way.”

He picks at his dirty fingernail. “You can’t push. Every album comes when it

comes.”

Spoken like a true procrastinator and I nod. “I never thought I’d get to meet

you cuz you don’t tour anymore.”

“We don’t tour right now,” he says. Boom. “Your album’s on the way, I

promise.”

“I gotta ask. Were you… were you writing a song in there?”

“You bet I was. See, as an artist, I go to these meetings for the pathos. Not to

sound like a douche…” As if the disclaimer doesn’t classify him as a douche. “But

as an artist I get more out of it. Ya got a beast in you, ya gotta feed the beast. I

get a lotta good material in there. Tons.”

“That’s so rad.” I was right. He’s a thief. “You know, I’m thinking I might go

get a guitar… a Schecter…” Find a new plaything. “You can say no… but is there

any way I can hit you up for advice?”

He gives me his number and says he has to get home as he quotes his own

song—I got a crate in a barrel and a barrel in a gun. “Here’s my advice about

finding a good Schecter…” Pregnant pause. “Get a Gibson, man.”

I laugh as if that was clever and he starts his car and did I do it? Did I get in

his head?

I tune in to his show at midnight, and sure enough, he’s wailing about the

holidays, pining for the good old days when he had time to focus on his true

calling, his music. The man is in pain, Mary Kay. And you can’t make him

happy. Listen to his “show” and look at his body. He has a Sacriphil tattoo. He

bled for that band. He took a needle for that band. But your name’s not inked

on his skin, and it’s time for you both to realize it.

The next day, I walk into the library and I slink into the back without saying

hello but an hour later, you find me. You’re frisky. You put your hands on Dolly

and you tell me that Nomi wants to get a kitten for Christmas.

“Are you allergic or anything?”

“No, I love cats, but she’s going away soon…” You look right at me. “Do you

like cats?” You are so hot for me that you are planning our life together and you

squeeze Dolly. Nervous. “I ask because our friends… they have three kittens, so

you know, you could get one too.”

You want us to adopt kittens together and I smile. “I love cats. It’s tempting.”

You pull your hands off Dolly. “Well, it’s something to think about. Our cats

would be siblings.” You fiddle with your belt. “Well,” you say. “Let’s both think

about it, yeah?”

I give you a yeah and already my plan is working.

The next day, I go to a meeting and Phil bitches to me… about cats. “Cats are

cool. But do I need one more thing to take care of? Already I don’t have enough

time to play.”

In a normal situation, you can’t advise someone to leave their spouse because

when they don’t, you become that asshole who talked shit about the spouse. But

nothing about our situation is normal and I am #TeamPhil. “You don’t need a

cat,” I say. “You need a studio.”

“Tell that to the wife. Man, we’re so close to freedom. My kid’s on her way to

college in a few months and the wife wants to tie me down with a new cat.”

“Does she not… I don’t wanna overstep… but does she not get who you are?”

He flicks his cigarette into a pile of leaves. “Nope,” he says. “Not lately.”

The next day I march into the library and walk into your office. “Okay,” I

say. “Let’s get cats. I’m in.”

You fix your eyes on your computer screen. He fights you every step of the

way and I am on #TeamYou. “Well,” you say. “That was fast. Do you have a name

picked out?”

I sit in my chair and you scratch your collarbone and I latch my hands

behind my head and smile. “Riffic,” I say. “Little Riffic Goldberg.”

“Ah,” you say. “I do love me some suffixes.”

Suffix sounds like sex and you are the smartest, sexiest woman on the planet

and you are the fan to my tastic, showing me a picture of your favorite kitten,

the one with a natural tuxedo. “Look at this little guy. He’s all dressed up and he

will find somewhere to go.”

I tell you his name should be Licious and you groan—anything but Licious—

and I dream of a long slow Saturday, you and me naming our kittens. “Well,” I

say. “There’s three of them, right?”

You nod. “Yes.”

“Okay, so after work, let’s go pick up Riffic, Tastic, and Licious.”

But you throw your empty coffee cup in the trash and tell me that now

Nomi’s on the fence. You’re doing it again, you’re protecting your rat. You tell

me that Nomi wants a kitten, not a cat, and kittens grow up fast. You shrug.

“There’s no way around it. It’s the fate of all kittens.”

You’re a fatalist and you need to believe in fate. Me. I pick up one of your

tchotchkes and I make a proposal. “How about I get all three kittens, Tastic,

Riffic, and Licious and then, when you’re ready, you can take one.”

“You’re so sweet, Joe…” Yes, I am. “But three cats… what about your

furniture?”

“I have plenty of room. And I can get the toys, scratching posts…”

I am a homebody and Phil is a home-wrecker and you fiddle with your pen.

“I always had this idea that when I had my bookshop… well, every bookshop

needs a cat.”

“Just like every bodega. How about this? I keep one. You keep one. And

Licious will live in your Bordello.”

You practically purr at me. “Well, on one condition. The little guy in the tux

cannot be named Licious. You can’t do that to me, Joe. You have to give up on

that name.”

I purr right fucking back. “Giving up’s not really my style, Mary Kay.”

Three days later, my arms are all scratched up and I am a man with three cats. I

am also the owner of a Gibson and I sneeze—my body will adjust to the dander—

and Phil waves his hands. Frantic. “C’mon, man. I don’t wanna catch what you

got.”

He was grumpy in the meeting and he’s grumpy after the meeting. I tell him

I’m sorry and he shrugs it off. “It’s not you,” he says. “The wife’s holding a grudge

about the kitten thing. Showing me videos of the kittens.”

I send you my videos and you love that I don’t post them online, that they’re

only for you, for me, for us. And now I find out that you show the videos to him

—ha—and he takes a drag of his cigarette. “All right,” he says. “I gotta split.”

He goes home to you—the injustice—and I go home to Riffic and Licious

and Tastic and they’re not just exceptionally cute. They also give us a reason to

communicate around the clock. You send me links to cat toys and you’re “too

busy with Christmas” to come over and meet our future cats and I’m a busy man,

pushing Phil to man up and put his music first. Christmas is getting closer—every

day Phil is a little bit closer to the edge—and every day I send you photos,

mostly of Licious. You tell me that you’re going to die of cuteness and somehow

I go to sleep and the next day, I go to a meeting and Phil spends the whole time

writing a song in his phone about how his wife is riding him about cats and

bookstores.

I go home after the meeting and play with my kittens and I check Phil’s

tweets.

Can’t fucking wait to tour. Philistans# Peace#

Did someone say SacriPHIL surprisealbum# ChristmasIsCanceled# Peace#

Fixin’ to put another shark inside your shark, Philistans… Peace#

What do you do when your wife drives you crazy? Asking for a friend Peace#

Licious and Tastic and Riffic are so cute—they’re scratching the Sacriphil

albums I bought on eBay—but I can’t just sit here. Not tonight. I want to see

you. I want to see what your marriage looks like when it’s imploding. I put on a

hoodie and I pick up my binoculars and I’m out the door.

It’s cold in the woods and it’s dark in the woods and your windows are bright

and I see you, Mary Kay. You’re turning the pages of a book and your rat walks

into the room and you don’t look up. You flip him the bird and he slams the

door and you are mine. You don’t love him anymore. You love me.

The blow comes out of nowhere.

Something hard hits the center of my back. Binoculars: Down. Me: Down.

The blow comes again: A boot in my back and heavy breathing—my poor ribs—

and then another kick. POW. I am on my side and I taste blood and another

kick knocks me into a rock. Roots punish my back and the boot punishes my

front and I know that boot. I’ve seen that boot. A heavy, militant-but-also-fuck-

me Sorel.

In a wheeze, I get her name out of my mouth. “Melanda?”

“I knew it!” Melanda grips a pink can of pepper spray, pink as your mother’s

Cadillac. “I knew you were a pervert the day we met,” she says. “Two words:

Woody. Allen.”

Fuck. Fuck. “Melanda, no, this isn’t what you think.”

She grunts. “For the last fucking time, you don’t tell me what I think. I know

what you’re doing, pervert.”

“You’re wrong. Let me… please listen to me.”

She grinds her big angry boot into my chest and there will be a bruise. “Aw,

do you want me to listen to you, Joe? Are you gonna tell me you were out here

bird-watching? Are you gonna tell me that you didn’t even know that Nomi lives

in this house?”

Nomi. No. Not her. NO. I can’t breathe and I am the bird, dying in the dirt.

“Melanda, this isn’t what you think.”

“He loves books! He adores film. And he does love birds. Birds as in teenage

girls.”

My vocal cords freeze up on me. The boot. The lie. “No, Melanda. No, no, I

was not looking at Nomi.”

“Don’t even try, pervert.” She presses a number on her phone and she thinks

I’m a pervert and you don’t come back from a pedo accusation and I am not a

fucking pedophile and Melanda may be skilled in the art of self-defense, but she

has a lot to learn about offense. I grab her by the Sorel and I yank. Hard. She

goes down and her phone goes down and I clamp my hand over her big vicious

mouth. I pick up the closest rock.

Crunch.

I’m still shaking, Mary Kay. My attacker is locked up downstairs in my Whisper

Room and this sort of shit isn’t supposed to happen in Cedar Fucking Cove. I

moved here to be happy. I moved here to make peace, to find peace, and now my

ribs are flaring, hot like McRibs.

My kittens are useless and clueless, meowing and playing like nothing ever

happened—thanks, fuckers—and I pick up my phone with my trembling hand. I

set up security cameras downstairs so that I have eyes on her, and she’s still

asleep for now.

I didn’t ask to be tangled up in your Blues, Mary Kay. The situation is calm

for now, but I can’t keep her here forever—she’s not a fucking cat—and I can’t

let her go—and I don’t want to be the guy who killed your best friend. (Even

though it would be self-defense if one thinks of the reputation as part of the

self, which it is.)

At least I have her phone—thanks for the thumbprint access, Apple!—and

I’m getting a Master’s in All Things Melanda. She’s been scheming to move to

Minnesota to chase down the only decent guy she ever dated, so I informed the

school that she was taking a leave to go out of town for some job interviews.

They didn’t seem surprised—she fights with everyone at that school—and I had

to give her an alibi, Mary Kay. We live in America and a single, relatively

attractive woman can’t just “disappear,” because there’s nothing women love

more than stories about missing women.

But she does have to go, Mary Kay. As it turns out, your “best friend” is a

double agent. She’s always whining to you about her old friend Netty—they met

on Melanda’s semester abroad—and you are supportive. But then she talks to

Netty… about you. We have to end their toxic friendship—we can’t have Netty

calling Interpol—so I send Netty a text from Melanda’s phone, a text meant for

you.

So I’m horrible lol but once again I’m done with Netty. She’s whining about her

birthday like she’s in sixth grade and it’s like Netty honey get a life you know lolol

horrible I know.

Netty got the message—oops!—and she snaps right back: I think this was

meant for Mary Kay. Have a nice life. Block. Mute. Bye.

Netty unfollows Melanda in all the stupid places—that’s one achievement

unlocked!—and she shares a passive-aggressive meme about fake friends and

maybe I could do this for a living. Take your phone, fix your life.

My ribs are cooling off and in a sick way, I’m happy that Melanda came after

me. See, Mary Kay, you never told me that we have an enemy in our midst. She’s

been campaigning against me for weeks—I knew it—and you always defend me,

and women are on guard when it comes to men—I get it—but never mind me,

Mary Kay. You should see what she says about you. I screenshot one of the worst

entries in her notepad app:

MK and those skirts honestly we get it you have legs lol and MK shows up with no

call bc I live alone as if I have no life HELLO I HAVE A LIFE—and I know you love

her, but this woman is not your Friend. This is why I don’t try too hard to keep

up with Exclamation Point Ethan, Mary Kay, and this is why Friends is a lie.

Most people wouldn’t like their friends if they got into their phones.

You would want me to have empathy for Melanda, and okay. She does try to

be a better person. She bought nine meditation apps—they’re not working—and

you warn her that Alice & Olivia are like her drug dealers and she sends you

excerpts of her food diary—NINE SAFEWAY DONUT HOLES I HATE

EVERYONE BUT HATE ME THE MOST RIGHT NOW GRRRR FUCK YOU

PATRIARCHY FUCK YOU SAFEWAY—and you rightfully tell her that she isn’t

fat—fuck you, United States of Body Dysmorphia—but there’s a lot you don’t

know, Mary Kay.

Would you still have empathy for Melanda if you knew that she manipulated

two unpaid, uncredited interns into building her feminist incubator? That’s

right, Mary Kay. Just ask the interns, Eileen and DeAnn. Your best friend

doesn’t support other women. She erases them.

And she wants to erase us too.

Last week, you told her not to give up on the dream of Minnesota and she

LOLed.

Lol MK I’m not moving. Never seeing Harry again.

You just sounded so excited about going there. You never know… maybe you will

Right. Kind of like you and your new little boyfriend… see we DO know lol

That’s not fair. That was… that was one kiss.

LOL MK. Face it. I’m not moving to MN. BI is home. You’re not leaving Phil. He’s

home. These are facts. This is why we drink our wine LOL

But she’s not honest with you, Mary Kay. After she blew you off with an LOL,

she sent two follow-up emails to HR reps in Minneapolis. She’s allowed to make

her moves but she discourages you from making your moves. She suffers and so

she wants you to suffer and now she’s wide awake, pounding on the glass walls of

my Whisper Room, screaming like a bad actress in a B movie. I crack my

knuckles. I can do this. I can take on her voice. And I have to because the two of

you text all fucking day. You type. Same way you do every fucking morning.

How’s life?

IT IS SEVEN A.M. WHY DON’T YOU WOMEN LEAVE EACH OTHER

ALONE? I breathe. This is the upside to this mess. I get to change your life. I

type.

Sweetie omg big news. Fingers crossed. I’m in a mad rush to Minneapolis for a job

interview yeeee and I already talked to a couple guys on Bumble lolol who knows but

yeeeeee lolol xoxo

My heart is pounding, the sun is up. Did I do a good job? Do you buy me as

Melanda? Here come the dots—please, God, you owe me—and here comes your

response.

Congrats!

It’s a win and I needed a win and you text again, sharing your own news—

you’re getting a haircut today. I put Melanda’s phone in my pocket—she told

you, Mary Kay, she’s in a mad rush—and it will be satisfying to see you growing,

weaning off your “sister,” but now it’s time for the hard part.

I have to go and face my attacker.

When I get downstairs, I don’t look in the cage and my Whisper Room was

never supposed to be a cage. I stand in front of my TV and Melanda’s behind

me, locked up and screaming—You’re a fucking pervert—but I owe it to you to try

and make her see the light. She spits at the glass and it turns out the Whisper

Room isn’t actually soundproof, which means that I hear every word of her

abuse. “You are a fucking pedophile and a psychopath and a fucking sociopath

and you will pay for this, you sicko. Let me out. Now.”

Ha! That is not how we catch flies, Melanda, and I sigh. “Well, make up your

mind. Which is it? What am I, exactly? All three or just one?”

I sit in my chair and I take out my flash cards. She is the teacher but I am the

professor and I was up all night making a lesson plan. She bashes the glass wall

with her fists. “PEDOPHILE!”

I sigh and shake my head. “Wrong.”

“Fuck you.”

“Come on, Melanda. You’re smarter than that.”

“I know, Joe. I know about your dirty Bukowski book.”

You must have told her I thought Nomi might like Bukowski over the phone

because I didn’t see that in your texts. “For God’s sake, Melanda, you should

know that reading Bukowski is a good way to learn about vile men. You’re an

English teacher.”

She blinks fast and pivots. “For your information, I’m actually trained to spot

pedophiles and using a mom as a conduit, well, that’s the oldest trick in the

book. Obviously.”

“I think your meditation apps are making you paranoid.”

“Make all the snide jokes you want, sweetie. I know what I saw. You’re a

monster. You are a pedophile and you will be the one who winds up behind

bars.”

“Moving on,” I say. And I pick up my flash cards. “I found your diary in the

notepad app on your phone…”

“No. No you didn’t.”

She bangs on the glass and I choose one of my favorites. “Date,” I say.

“November first. ‘MK calls and expects me to pick up as if I don’t have a LIFE

but when I call HER does she pick up? Nope! Too busy with her familyyyyyyy.

Try being alone you mommy whiner!’ ”

She makes earmuffs. “Stop it.”

I pick another flash card. A real gem. “Date: October twenty-seventh.”

“You are a child molester, you sicko. These are notes. I get PMS. That is

private.”

I maintain my composure and I read Melanda’s diary. “ ‘Sometimes I just

wish I could MURDER MK so smug like she’s first woman to ever have a crush

at work GET A LIFE GRRR and if Nomi was my kid like just no. Be a role

model STOP FLIRTING YOU SLUT HE’S NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU NOT

EVERY GUY IS SO CRAZY ABOUT YOU and buy some fucking pants

WHERE IS MY PERIOD FUCK YOU WORLD.’ ”

“Stop it, Joe. You have no idea. Female friendships… they’re complicated.”

I go into her texts and open the history of Melanda and Seamus. “Huh,” I say.

“Is that why you drunk-text Seamus asking who was a better lay back in high

school?”

She spits at me, as if I’m the one who texts Shortus—I still can’t believe you

slept with him, it stings, it does—and I sigh. “I’m not judging you, Melanda. I’m

just trying to help you see that sometimes… you’re wrong.”

“FUCK YOU, PERVERT.”

I pick another card. “November fourth. ‘I would be living in Minneapolis by

now if not for Married Kay. I HATE HER. Nomi should be living with ME and

UGHGHGHGH.’ Married Kay,” I say. “Clever.”

She looks at me. “You won’t make me think I’m the bad guy, you sicko. You

were stalking Nomi. I saw.”

“Huh,” I say. “You know, Melanda, I guess what hurts the most, besides my

rib cage…”

She rolls her eyes. An emoji come to life.

“I get it. This isn’t an easy place to be single. Hell, I live next door to a family.

You and I… we’re in the minority. You try to do good… I try to do good, but you

decided that because I’m single, there must be something wrong with me.”

“And I was right. You’re a pedo.”

“Melanda, I am not a pedophile. But after reading your notepad, I gotta say, I

do wonder what you were doing in the woods…”

“Oh you sicko, I was looking out for Nomi.”

“Ah.”

“The Bukowski… the Woody Allen… I knew it then and obviously I really

know it now. I see you.”

I pick another flash card. “ ‘Feels so freaking good to tell DeAnn and Eileen

that I will be the one taking the credit for the incubator. These young girls are

SO FUCKING ENTITLED and someone needs to smack them down because

they have NO IDEA how hard it is to be a woman in the real world.’ ”

She sits up straight as if there’s a book on her head. “What’s your point?”

“You don’t see the hypocrisy? ‘Women supporting women.’ You’re literally

erasing the women who support you.”

“I am not the one on trial here.”

“You called me a pedophile. You attacked me but look at you. What about

you? You hate your best friend and you’re stealing credit from your fellow

sisters.”

She folds her arms, indignant. “Nice try, pervert, but you don’t know the first

thing about my life. Eileen and DeAnn are college kids. I’m not ‘erasing’ their

work. They don’t have a fucking clue about how hard it is to be a single woman

in a school system. Let them try going into a school every day where everyone

treats you like a leper slash whore because you’re not married. And they think

you should just be able to work every day all day because you don’t have a ‘life,’

like there’s something inherently wrong with you if you’re alone.”

“Christ, Melanda. Just admit it. They’re wrong about you and you were

wrong about me.”

“Well, unlock the door and let me go and I’ll know for sure that you’re not a

predator.”

“Melanda, I wish I could trust you, I do, but I wasn’t grooming Nomi and you

attacked me and this is on you.”

She bangs on the glass, which hurts her hand more than it hurts me. “Let me

out. Now.”

Her phone is in my pocket and it buzzes. And it’s you: When do you fly to

MN?! So excited for you!

Melanda drops her fists. “Is it MK?” She’s trembling now, shaking, and her

sizable vocabulary is boiled down to a single word. “SICKO!”

I write back cuz this is what you gals do. Leaving in a few hours!

Melanda knocks on the glass. Softer now. She’s a teacher again. “Joe, look…

I’m sorry. I was paranoid and I did judge you, okay? I really thought you were

just latching onto MK to get to Nomi… I mean MK is old.”

You’re not old.

“Joe,” she says. “I mean it. I’m sorry. And if you let me go… Look, you’re right.

We both overreacted. And no one has to know about this. Now that we’re

talking… well, you’re right. We are on the same side. We can be.”

I wasn’t born an hour ago and I sigh. “There’s a remote on the bed.”

She kicks the wall as if she’s the only one trapped. “Fuck you.”

And I gotta say, Mary Kay. I’m a little offended because I’m the victim here. I

have gone out of my way to be Mr. Fucking Good Guy and now because of her

my Whisper Room is a cage and Dr. Nicky is right. You can’t control other

people. You can only control your own actions. Melanda doesn’t deserve my

help, but lucky for her, when I see anyone trapped in a cage, even if it’s their

fault, well, what can I say? I’m a good fucking Samaritan.

She screams for help and I nod at the remote on the bed. “Go ahead,” I say.

“Pick it up. I have a project for you.”

She is quivering—it could be an act—and she picks up the remote and the

screen lights up and there they are, all of the movies in her iTunes account. See,

Mary Kay, Melanda obsessively takes inventory of every calorie she puts into her

body. But she needs to take that analytical obsession in a different direction.

She needs to think about the movies she watches over and over again. I try to

explain this to her but she is the same old dog. “Oh God,” she sighs. “You’re not

a pervert. You’re a psychopath.”

“You call me a psycho? I’m the ‘pervert.’ Melanda, would you look at the size

of your Woody Allen collection? You own more of his movies than I do!”

“It’s different,” she snarls. “I’m a woman. You have to know the enemy.”

“Bullshit,” I say. “You own Anything Else and Melinda and Melinda and those

aren’t even in the fucking canon.”

She simmers. “Get me out of here.”

“This is a teachable moment, Melanda.”

“This is not happening.”

“Oh, sweetie, I think we’ve established that this most certainly is happening.”

“You’re a sick man.”

“Well, like you, I do appreciate Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

“That movie belongs to Anjelica Huston,” she snarls. “Not that pig.”

I’m on her phone, pacing, and I wish you could see me right now, Mary Kay.

“Okay,” I say. “Welcome to Melanda’s Movies 101.”

“Stop it.”

“We casually buy movies in the middle of the night, but sometimes our

selections say a lot about our underlying issues.”

“No.”

“You like your female bonding stories—Beaches and Romy and Michele and

Terms of Endearment—and you identify strongly with Bridget Jones. You own all

three movies, plus Jerry Maguire and New in Town. Huh. Perhaps the woman you

identify with most is Renée Zellweger.”

She turns red. “There was a fucking sale, you idiot.”

“You’re also a fan of the psycho woman genre. The Hand That Rocks the

Cradle… Single White Female…”

She sinks to the floor and she’s crying now, she’s moving forward—yay!—and

I hunker down like a counselor, meeting her at ground level. “Melanda, it’s okay.

We’re both in shock. We both lost our tempers…” It’s not true—I acted in self-

defense—but sometimes you have to lie to your pupil. “We need a minute to

decompress…” And I need a minute to figure out what to do with her. “You

were burnt out. Anyone can see that. So just take this for what it is, some time

to self-reflect. These movies are your bedtime stories, your comfort foods.”

She blows her nose on her shirt. A GIRL IS A GUN. “You’re insane.”

“Forget about me, Melanda. I’m worried about you. You could have gotten

hurt out there…” She looks at me like I’m the crazy one. I carry on. “Look,” I say.

“Every Sunday you plan a detox from your phone. You turn off your

notifications but you never go through with it.”

She bites her lip. Then she clocks the Safeway bag I put in her room while

she was sleeping. “Can you put the TV in here? I have sensitive retinas.”

“Melanda…”

She knows not to press me—she’s a fast learner, Mary Kay—and she juts her

chin at the table. “What’s in the bag?”

“Your favorite thing in the world,” I say. “Safeway donut holes.”

She almost smiles, because what a thrill it is, even under circumstances like

this, to be known for who you really fucking are.

I’m at the fucking gym—gotta be seen, gotta normal the fuck up—and Seamus is

working out two feet away, singing along to Kid Fucking Rock, who waxes

nostalgic-pervert about his whiskey-soaked glory days mounting an underage

girl by a lake. Ugh. You and I—well, you and Melanda—are texting and for the

second time in five minutes I plant my kettle bell on the ground to read your

latest missive.

You: Drink this afternoon before your ferry? What time is your flight?

Melanda: Sweetie I wish but I am sooooo busy lol why

Melanda’s phone rings—you’re calling her, oh shit oh shit—and my stomach

muscles quiver like I just finished a fucking Murph and I can’t talk to you—I’m

not her—and I can’t talk now—I’m in a fucking gym. I send you to voicemail and

I type. Fast.

Melanda: lol sorry but I can’t talk, too busy.

You: I get it but can you just talk for two minutes?

NO, MARY KAY, SHE CAN’T.

I type.

Melanda: Lol sooooo sorry but I’m running so late. Is this more Joe drama?

My heart pounds. But this is your pattern.

You: ugh yes and no I just wish we could go get a drink

We wouldn’t be in this fucking mess if you talked to me more than you talk

about me and Shortus yanks his earbuds. “What’s up with you, Chatty Cathy?”

“Nothing,” I say. “My buddy in New York is having issues with his wife.”

Shortus grunts. “Sucks to be him. But that doesn’t mean it should suck to be

you or us, New Guy. Take that shit outside. It’s distracting.”

I’m not New Guy anymore—I live here—and all these fitness junkies are only

here because it provides distraction from their lackluster lives. Shortus reinserts

his earbuds and I wipe down the kettle bell as if my hands are dirty and walk

outside to deal with you.

Melanda: I wish we could go drink too but yeeeeee flight so soon!

You: And yay flight! You know I always root for you even if the idea of you

ACTUALLY moving makes me feel insane. I really felt like a drink today but oh well so

happy for you!

That hurts, Mary Kay. You don’t feel insane about Melanda. You miss me.

And Melanda has no time for you—she’s watching one of her favorite Woody

Allen movies—and you need a reality check.

Aw, sweetie you’ll be okay. Give my love to Phil and Nomi xo

You don’t like the patronizing tone—I know you and I don’t blame you—and

I drive into town and pop into Blackbird—just another normal fucking day, no

woman trapped in my basement—and the fecal-eyed multigenerational family is

here. I bump into the grandfather’s chair and Nancy glares at me as if it wasn’t

an accident and they’re all as cold to me as they are warm to each other.

Motherfuckers, all of them. But at least they saw me. Normal Joe! Nothing to

see!

You’re not Nancy, Mary Kay. You’re not happily married. But you’re not

texting me to meet up for a drink and that’s the problem. I cross the street and

head for the T & C and Melanda’s phone buzzes. It’s you again—shocker—and

you want to know what she’ll wear for the big job interview. This is sadly

normal for you two. She sends you her date outfits and you weigh in—I like the

red—and she argues with you until you eventually give up—What matters most is

how you feel in it. Gotta run. Phil’s home and as we know this is a miracle—but right

now you’re in the salon, you’re bored, and you badger Melanda a second time.

Need pictures! Let me live vicariously through you.

There are so many problems with this statement, Mary Kay. Melanda can’t

send you a selfie. She’s wearing the T-shirt she had on when she attacked me—A

GIRL IS A GUN—and you are too young to feel like the only living you have left to

do is vicarious. I turn the screw.

lol that is so sad. No offense but I feel like the Joe stuff is making you crazy.

You deflect and say that you might get bangs today—just fully become my

mother—and that’s a cry for help but Melanda is a bad friend. I read enough to

know what she would say so I lie to your face: Do it. You can rock bangs! You have

the face for them and you are NOT your mother. Send me pic if you do gotta run so

busy before flight lol

You give a smiley face. Send pics! I’m here! Excited for you, M!

You’re acting out. Cutting your hair instead of coming clean with me just

because your best friend is about to get on a plane. You text again.

Pics please!

Melanda has 24,985 pics in her phone, most of them pictures of her, standing

in front of a full-length mirror. I choose a recent selfie and send it to you with

the shrugging brunette girl emoji—her favorite—and you are typing. A lot. This

isn’t a fucking essay contest. It’s a yes or no question and then here you are.

Wait I thought you returned that blue dress last week? When we were in Seattle?

My heart alarm goes off and no. NO. This would be easier if there weren’t

ten thousand texts between you two and so many fucking pictures of so many

fucking outfits and I close my eyes. WWMD.

Ugh long story but more like get me off this rock no offense lol just excited to go

That was cruel, maybe too cruel and you’re silent. I send another photo of

Melanda in mustard pants and a green sweater—was she trying to be vomit for

Halloween?—and once again: nothing. I studied your conversations and this

isn’t how it goes. Radio silence is bad and it makes me nervous for me, for you.

Are you telling the stylist about what just happened? Did I fuck up?

I type for Melanda: You there? Sweetie I’m sorry just frazzled lol you ok?

More silence. You’re in the salon, in the chair, exactly 1,058 feet away from

me. You have nothing to do but write back to your friend and are you

suspicious? Do you have a sixth sense? Did you run out of the salon? Are you

pounding on Melanda’s front door? So help me God if a selfie that isn’t even

mine brings me down and I can’t take this silence from you. I need to know that

you’re not on a paranoid mission to find your friend. I need to know that you’re

not at the police station, where they’re not used to this kinda thing and I have to

find you because it’s not like you to drop off. I walk toward Firefly and I loiter

by the gazebo—I miss lingering with you—and then the door to the salon opens.

It’s you. And you didn’t get bangs.

You wave at me and I wave at you and I’m holding Melanda’s phone but you

don’t know that. Thank God I took off the FEMALE FIRST case—Smart Joe!—and

you put your hands in your pockets and you’re heading my way and you’re Closer

every second and now you’re here. You touch your hair. “It’s a little much,

right?”

“Well, Mary Kay, you did just step out of a salon.”

You laugh and I’m safe. We’re safe. You don’t suspect anything—I can tell

because if you did, you’d be holding your phone as if it contains evidence—and

you don’t think it’s weird that I’m here because this is Cedar Fucking Cove. We

live here. “Well,” you say. “It’s good to see you, but I should probably get

home…”

Liar. You just told Melanda you want to drink. “Oh come on. How about a

drink?” I took a blow to my ribs for you and I hold your eyes. “Hitchcock?”

You nod. “Hitchcock.”

Your hair bounces when you walk—we are in motion—and I tell you I need a

haircut and you say that Firefly takes walk-ins and I open the door for you and

you thank me and we sit up front by the window. You bring your hands

together.

“Okay,” you say. “I feel bad that things have been so weird.”

I take a sip of my water. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mary Kay. I get it.”

You pick up the menu and act like I meant what I said and you don’t know if

you want wine or coffee and this is new for us. This is a first for us. You’re

ordering a glass of Chablis—last time we drank the hard stuff—and pulling your

turtleneck over your chin. You just said you felt bad that things were weird but

look at you now, such deliberately tiny sips as you run your hands through your

hair, as if I’m blind, as if you’re hungry for a compliment, as if I’m in a position

to tell you that you look good.

You’re a fox. Foxes know they look good. I stare at you. “Hey, are you all

right?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Just tired.” Bullshit. “I woke up on the wrong side of the

bed.” More bullshit and that’s a lazy answer, a child’s answer, a stranger’s

answer. “And I’m a little weirded out. Melanda says she’s headed to Minneapolis

today.”

I’m tired and spent and now I long for you to go back to your bullshit

because YOUR BEST FRIEND IS IN MY FUCKING BASEMENT and why

didn’t I just let you go home? I nod. “Vacation?”

“She says she’s going on a job interview.”

Red flags abound. If you believed Melanda’s story, you would have said that

she’s leaving town, not that she says she’s leaving. I sip my water. You rub your

forehead. “Maybe it’s just me…” Yes. Let’s go with that theory. “She’s always

talked about moving there one day… but the timing feels off. Or maybe I’m off.”

“Maybe we should get something to eat.”

You ignore my suggestion. “Last week, we took one of those quizzes to find

out which Succession character you are…” I know. I already read the texts and I

was surprised that Shortus got Roman. “Anyway,” you say. “Melanda got Ken

Doll as you call him…” God, I love you. You remember everything. “And I got the

evil ogre dad.”

“I don’t think Logan’s an ogre.”

“Ah, so you watched it.”

“Yes I did and Logan Roy is a good man. His spoiled kids are the evil ogres.”

“No,” you say. “Logan Roy is a monster. His kids have issues because of him.”

“That’s a cheat,” I say. “You can’t go through life blaming your childhood for

the way you are as an adult.”

You shut down on me and maybe you and your husband belong in my

Whisper Room with your friend Melanda because maybe you’re all broken

birds, busted beyond repair. You rub your eyes and your hands are trembling

and it’s just a stupid TV show. I have empathy for you. I want to take care of

you. “Hey,” I say. “I think we should get you something to eat.”

“Joe, I’m married.” A beat. “Seriously.”

You did it. You told me the truth. And now you won’t look at me, only at the

table, and I should be relieved—we’re in a new place—but if we go deep right

now, you’re gonna want to hash it all out with Melanda. I pray for a kitchen fire

but it’s no use.

We’re here. Melanda is in my basement. And you’re staring at me. Waiting.

I do what anyone would do at a time like this. I stay silent. I don’t

acknowledge the waiter when he drops the check as if he’s pushing us out the

door and I stare at the table. I remember the Titanic ferry.

You sigh. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, say something.”

“What do you want me to say? I know.”

“You know?”

“Mary Kay, come on. You can’t be all that surprised…”

You sip your water. “How long have you known?”

I don’t want you to think I’m a liar like you and I don’t want you to feel

worse than you already do and you are part fox. You want to feel clever. You like

to feel clever. So I lie to you. “Only for a couple days.”

You snort a little. It’s not becoming. It’s not you. “Wow. I guess I’m a really

good liar.”

“I wanted to be in the dark.”

You want to have all the power and this is why Melanda resents you, because

you think being in a shitty marriage makes you superior. “Joe, let’s not fight.”

“We’re not fighting.” We are fighting.

My heart isn’t in my body. It’s on the table. Right in front of you. Bloody.

Raw. Beating. “Joe,” you say, and you say it the wrong way. “I didn’t come here

to tell you I’m leaving him. This isn’t a date.”

Yes you are and yes it is. “I know that.”

“And I’m not a cheater.”

Yes you are, but things will be different with me. “Of course you’re not.”

“My daughter… if she knew about that night…”

You loved that night and I did too. “I mean it, Mary Kay. I didn’t say a word.”

“And I didn’t come clean because I’m about to make any changes in my life.

And if that were to happen… which isn’t to say that it will happen…” Yes it will!

“Well… that’s why I can’t do this with you on any level. You cannot be the man

who wrecked my marriage.”

Everyone knows that the people in the marriage are the ones responsible for

the marriage, everyone except married people, and I sip my water. “Agree.”

“And I am sorry. I should have told you that night at the pub. Hell, when

‘Italian Restaurant’ came on… I mean why didn’t I just say it then? What’s

wrong with me?”

I tell you there is nothing wrong with you and you tell the waiter that we

want another round—yes!—and you stand—be right back—and I take out

Melanda’s phone and sure enough, there you are.

I’m a horrible person aren’t I?

Melanda ignores you because you need to think for yourself. I put her phone

back in my pocket and a minute later, you come back. Your hair is flatter and

you take a deep breath like you were using one of her meditation apps. “Okay,”

you say. “What do you want to know?”

“It’s none of my business. We’re okay. I’m glad you told me and I know it

wasn’t easy.”

You clench your napkin. “Please stop defending me. You’ve always been up-

front with me. You told me everything about your past…” Everything that

matters. “And I let you think that I’m alone. Remember that first day, when you

said Gilmore Girls…”

I remember everything about you. “I remember.”

“I should have said it right then. But I admit it. I wanted to pretend. You

were so… new.”

You want me to say nice things to you but I can’t say nice things or you’ll call

me a marriage wrecker. I nod.

“My husband’s name is Phil. He’s a musician. You might even know who he

is…”

You say it like he’s George Fucking Harrison. “I mean it, you don’t have to do

this.”

“Phil DiMarco… He was the lead singer of Sacriphil.”

It’s fun to tell you that I don’t know Sacriphil and you wish I did—foxes like

attention—and you tell me he’s not just your husband. “He’s Nomi’s dad.”

I nod as in I fucking knew that and you hiss at me. “Well? Aren’t you gonna tell

me I’m horrible? I don’t wear a ring and I ran around with you… flirting with

you…”

“Well, all we can do is take it from here.”

“But see, that’s the thing. I’m not here, Joe.” Yes you fucking are. “I can’t be

here.” Yes you fucking can. “Joe, I lied to you, stringing you along, letting you

adopt all those kittens.”

“I wanted those kittens.”

You pull an ice cube out of your drink with your fingers. You hide it in your

palm. “Look, no marriage is perfect…” According to all the people who should

have gotten divorced ten fucking years ago. “But part of the reason I never even

thought about making any change is…” You open your palm. The ice cube

glistens. “Joe,” you say. “I didn’t think someone like you existed.”

I want to kiss you. This is our moment but you bulldoze over it with your

words, telling me how selfish you think you’ve been, as if you wish I would walk

out on you and make it easier for you to stay in your rut. You don’t owe me an

explanation but you want to explain. You love talking to me because you can be

honest with me. You don’t come out and say it, but it’s true. Look at you,

relaxing and thinking out loud. I’m the only one you can talk to. Me.

“See,” you say. “It sounds trite and Melanda would be horrified…” You say her

name so casually. You can’t hear the alarms going off in my head because

WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO WITH HER, MARY KAY?

I can’t think about that right now so I breathe. Be here now. “How so?”

“Well,” you say. “I got married so young. I’ve never been through anything

like this… meeting an available man, spending time with him, getting to know

you slowly… And Melanda’s stories about being out there are always so grim.

But you… I built my life around the idea that I wasn’t gonna meet anybody like

you.”

But you did. “Really, Mary Kay, it’s okay. Nothing has changed. We can wait.”

You shake your head no and you fight my collective plural with your

collective plural—We’re a family, Joe, it’s not that simple—and I let you win this

battle. There’s no point in arguing with you right now. Melanda’s only been

“gone” for a few hours, and already you’re changing. Growing. You’re not there

yet, I know. Your maternal instincts have overwhelmed your basic need for love,

for self-preservation, and soon your phone buzzes and it’s him.

We both know it’s time to go.

On the sidewalk, we don’t embrace. You say you should probably go and bells

are ringing on the shop doors as they open and close. The holidays are all

around us. You thank me for being such a grown-up about all this and I tell you

the truth, that I just want you to be happy. You think this is goodbye. You think

this is the end. But I walk away with a smile on my face.

I didn’t think someone like you existed.

Oh, Mary Kay, yes I fucking do exist and deep down you know there is no

going back.

I trot downstairs and I’m basking in a cloud of smug. Melanda tried to turn you

against me and she failed and even though I should kill her for putting me in

this position, I admit it, Mary Kay.

I want to fucking gloat. I want the teacher to know she failed.

She greets me and the donut holes in my hand with a blank stare. “Melanda,

there are handcuffs in the drawer of the end table. Cuff yourself to the bedpost

and I’ll bring you a snack.”

She bickers as if I’m not the one in hell right now and my sugar high is

fading. She’s here, she really is—am I fucked?—and she finds the handcuffs—the

cops should have locked her up, not me—but life is a shark that moves forward

—even Phil knows that—and my time away was productive. I saw you—you love

me—and things are different in here too now. Melanda is slower. She’s

slouching, almost apologizing for her inability to get the cuffs on. She’d never

admit it but she gets it now: I’m the fucking boss. And she cuffs up because she

works in a school system. She’s conditioned to respect authoritative ranks so I

enter the room like the professor, like the principal. “Okay, Melanda. What have

we learned today?”

She eyeballs me. “Well, you’re in a good mood. I suppose you saw MK, huh?”

That’s none of your fucking business, Melanda. “I thought we’d start with a

deep dive into friendship narratives.”

“If you’re so obsessed with Mary Kay why didn’t you kidnap her?”

“I didn’t ‘kidnap’ you. You’re not a child. Now come on. Friendship movies.

Romy and Michele Beaches. Let’s dive in.”

I don’t want to be Melanda’s Dr. Fucking Nicky but you know what, Mary

Kay? I do want your friend to cop to her sins. It’s only now that I realize just how

much she hurt us. If you had a real best friend, you would have told me about

your husband several weeks ago and her phone buzzes. It’s you: I did it. I told him.

Calling you now ahahahha

You are a woman of your word and Melanda’s phone is ringing and I send

you to voicemail—what fucking choice do I have?—and now Melanda’s gloating,

smoothing the wrinkles in her sweatpants. “Uh-oh,” she says. “I’d say someone

has a big problem.”

“Yeah, you own a library of movies about female friendship but you’re not a

friend.”

“Oh please,” she says. “Most women our age love Beaches and Romy and

Michele. But I’ll tell you what is unusual. Me sending MK to voicemail. Gimme

the phone.”

“No.”

“Suit yourself. And FYI…” Is she this patronizing with her students? “My

movies are just bedtime stories I turn on after I pop a Xanax, sweetie.”

Her phone buzzes. It’s you: Can you talk? I promise I’ll be fast! Or set a time for

later?

I know you don’t mean to hurt me, Mary Kay, but for fuck’s sake TAKE A

FUCKING HINT. I write back: Sorry I am insane busy lol will call you later!

You don’t write back—you’re mad—and Melanda says that I’m playing with

fire and I hate her, Mary Kay. I hate her for being right. I pop a hole in my

mouth—so help me God if this woman makes me get love handles—and I ask

her if she’s the Hillary Whitney or the C. C. Bloom—and she sighs. “I know you

work the ‘loner’ angle pretty hard, but here’s a heads-up about friends. When I

go out of town, MK waters my plants. We talk, Joe. We talk a lot.”

FUCK MY LIFE. “Are you the Hillary Whitney or the C. C. Bloom?”

“When I need to talk, she picks up. And when she needs to talk, I pick up.”

You text again, as if you’re on her side, not mine—You okay? Can I do

anything?—and I wish you weren’t so kind but I know you have an ulterior

motive—you want to talk about me—and Melanda snaps her fingers at me. “Just

let me talk to her.”

“You know that’s not an option.”

“Be real, sweetie. I’m a single woman. MK is a mom. She checks up on me.

One time, my phone died when I was out with this guy… She has the code to my

place. She was at my condo that night.”

Why do you have to be such a good damn friend, Mary Kay? “Let’s focus on

you, Melanda.”

My voice is shaky—how could it not be?—and there’s a crack in my cloud of

smug.

Melanda eyes me. “Do you want to go to prison.”

I may not know what to do about Melanda, but I am not going to prison and

you are not going to Melanda’s fucking condo and you text again—Sorry to be a

stage nine clinger but I really need to talk—and I know, Mary Kay. I get it. But

Melanda is FUCKING BUSY RIGHT NOW and she sprawls out on the futon

and lectures me in her singsong tone about how all women are C. C. Bloom and

Hillary Whitney and all women are Romy and Michele and I need you to not

want to talk to her so I have no choice, Mary Kay. I have to be mean. Well,

Melanda has to be mean.

Sweetie I am so happy you told him but I’m one person trying to take care of myself

and I just… lol you can tell me about your side-piece boyfriend when I get settled into

my hotel okay?

You’re so mad that you don’t respond for a full minute and you’re so

benevolent that when you do respond you’re kind: I get it. I will water your plants

tonight. Is the code the same?

I prefer keys to codes and you’re antsy. You don’t really care about her plants

but you want to hide out in her condo and think about me and pretend that

you’re single and Melanda grins. “Even for her, this is a lot of texting.” She sits up

on the futon. “What’s your plan, Joe?”

I DON’T FUCKING KNOW and you text her again—Let me know if the code

changed, love you—and I love you so I nip this in the fucking bud: Lol same code

but no need to worry about the plants. I tossed them a couple days ago. Would LOVE if

you could scoop up mail next week tho xoxo.

You give Melanda a thumbs-up but I know you, Mary Kay. You won’t wait a

week and what the fuck am I gonna do about her?

“It’s not as easy as you thought, is it, sweetie?”

“Do you cry when Hillary Whitney dies in Beaches?”

“You didn’t realize that real best friends talk every day. And I do not mean

text. I mean talk. As in out loud.”

“You’re happy for C. C. Bloom when she gets custody of that little girl, aren’t

you? You always wanted something like that to happen to you, so that you could

have Nomi all to yourself.”

“Honey, enough about the movies. You’re in trouble. MK will go to the police

if I don’t call her back. I mean yes, your little Minnesota story is cute, absolutely,

but if I did fly to Minneapolis, I’d call her from the airport to bitch about a loud

‘businessman’ and I’d call her from the hotel to bitch about the sheets. You don’t

know how it is with sisters.”

“You’re not her sister.”

She huffs. “Fine. You won’t be the first overzealous man to dig his own

grave.”

You see the best in people—always a dangerous approach to life—and this

why we’re a good team, Mary Kay. I see the worst. I tell Melanda that I don’t

care if I go to prison. I tell her that she’s the one behind bars, that her whole life

is a loveless fucking lie. She rolls over—I’m getting to her—and I tell her that I

am here to protect you from her and that no matter what happens, I have all the

evidence. I know that she resents you and I tell her that she’s neither a feminist

nor a sister and that you’re not gonna be her prisoner anymore.

And now she sits up and looks at me. “So Phil and I went out in high school.”

It’s so sad, how puffed up she gets by mentioning ancient high school history.

“Ah,” I say. “So Mary Kay stole your boyfriend. No wonder it’s so toxic between

you two.”

“Hardly,” she says. “I only tell you because obviously, I never moved on. Phil

is… well, he’s a rock star…” Mick Jagger is a rock star. Phil DiMarco is a rocker.

“And honey…” She puts her hand on her chest. “It’s sad that you think that she’d

ever leave him for you.”

“Tell me the code to your condo.”

She grins. “Ah,” she says. “I got to you, didn’t I?”

“I’ll get in there one way or another, Melanda.”

“I know,” she says. “You’ll get into my condo. But you’ll never get between

MK and Phil…” She smirks again. Vicious as an eighth-grade queen bee. “It’s so

cute. You swagger in here because she finally told you about Phil. You break

into my phone… you think you know us… I don’t know your deal, but you’ve

obviously seen Beaches and Romy and Michele. You know that best friends talk

about everything.”

“Give me the fucking code.”

“But you don’t have transcripts of our wine nights… our phone calls…”

I hate my skin for turning red. “Just tell me the code.”

“Pound 342,” she says. 342 as in You love me. Ugh. “You can write it down.”

I should just fucking kill her, Mary Kay. “Thank you.”

I turn to go and she baits me. “I wish you were there the night she told me

about you.”

I say nothing.

“How you didn’t go to college… how you don’t have any friends… and I

definitely wish you had been there the night she told me about what a bad kisser

you are. Too much tongue.”

I won’t let her see my face. I know better, Mary Kay. She’s lying. She has to be

lying.

“It’s so sad that you actually think you’re in competition with Phil…” My

teeth are chattering. “And she’s right, Joe. You read too much.” No such thing.

“You overdose on beef and broccoli…” You would never say that about me. “That’s

the only possible explanation for why you could believe that she’d ever leave

someone like him for someone like you. She’s too kind for her own good.

Obviously she said something that put a pep in your step today but my God,

honey, get a clue. MK is nice to everyone. She’s a librarian, a public servant. A

people pleaser. It’s just a shame when guys like you take kindness so personally.”

She yawns like my mother and she reminds me of my mother, who would

turn up the volume on Jerry Springer when I got home from school, when I

wanted to tell her about my day. When I was dead to her because I was happy.

That’s what’s happening right now, Mary Kay. You put a “pep in my step”—you

told me I exist—and your friend wants me to stumble. She’s not smart like you

and me—she can’t be happy for other people, not really—and she won’t ever

learn her lesson and fuck it. Do I do it right now? Do I kill your best friend?

“Sweetie,” she says. “Could you move the TV in here? I have sensitive retinas

and the glare from the window really is killing me. I’d also love a steak. I am

simply dying for some real red meat, you know?”

I want to, I do. But no. I don’t have a plan and I’m not going down over

Melanda.

I slam the door and on the way upstairs, my tongue pulsates in my mouth.

Fuck you, Melanda. My tongue is just fine.

Isn’t it?

I did not give her my fucking TV and I am not going to get her a steak. Bad dogs

don’t get treats. Everyone knows that. And that’s what she is, Mary Kay: a bad

dog. Territorial and violent. She attacked me and I brought her home. I fed her.

I tried to train her and she turned around and assaulted me again.

I definitely wish you had been there the night she told me about what a bad kisser

you are. Too much tongue.

Now I’m pacing in my backyard (watching my estranged son run around on

Instagram to remind myself of how fucking good I am. He’s toddling. He’s cute.

I made that). I trip on an exposed root in the natural landscape and I hate

Bainbridge Island because there is such a thing as TOO FUCKING QUIET.

We’re not in the desert and no one has to be on the factory line at 7:00 A.M. so

why is everyone but me asleep?

I wasn’t gonna hurt anyone. I’m a good goddamn guy but I’m a lonely guy,

bullied and used. She attacked me! It’s her fault that she’s in that basement, that

I’m in this mess, and did you really make fun of my kissing? Did you mean it

when you said you never thought you’d meet someone like me? Or is Melanda

right? Was that your kind way of telling me I’m not good enough?

I can’t be here. And no I don’t want to get on the ferry and ride to Seattle

and stuff my face with salmon ampersand quinoa and visit a bookstore

underneath a market—we get it, Seattle, you have history—only to be hungry an

hour later and hunt down some restaurant with a twee pink door. All of that is

really only fun if you’re doing it with someone you love and I love you but you’re

like the rest of the islanders right now.

You’re in bed.

I put on my gloves—no fucking prints, no DNA—and I unlock the door to

Melanda’s condo and set the stage for her departure in case you do pop by. I go

in the bathroom—the door is propped open by a copy of The Thorn Birds that

she cut in half—and it’s a foul mess of O.B. tampons and Fitness magazines and

monogrammed towels: MRS. Wow. Melanda Ruby Schmid really is a very bad

dog. Her parents knew it, burying the ruby because they knew she wasn’t a gem,

saddling her with initials she could never live up to. I pick up a framed photo of

you and your best friend and even when she’s happy, she’s miserable. Hiding

behind sunglasses while you squint in the sun.

I check my phone. Melanda is tearing the sheets off the bed and she isn’t

capable of appreciating a surprise movie-binge staycation because she isn’t

capable of love. She only sleeps in one half of her bed at home—the other half is

littered with mini Dove wrappers and oh for fuck’s sake, Melanda, you’re not a

supermodel. Buy a candy bar.

She’s reading Sarah Jio’s Violets of March and no, Melanda, that book isn’t

about you. It’s about a nice woman, a divorcée who got married because she

believed in love, unlike some people.

Was she right, Mary Kay? Are you never gonna leave him?

I open the junk drawer in her kitchen and she has dozens of Women’s Fitness

exercise calendars and they’re glued together by time and self-loathing. I look in

her mirror—it rests on the other half of The Thorn Birds—and it lies to me and

makes me taller and thinner than I am. I look above her mirror where there’s

another big fat lie in the form of a cheery sign: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. I pick up her

computer and the last thing she googled was young Carly Simon and no,

Melanda. You don’t look like Carly Simon because Carly Simon has a soul. I

turn on her TV where it’s nothing but Real Housewives. She didn’t watch the

documentaries made by women for women that she praises on Twitter and she

listens to “Coming Around Again” so much because if no one ever stays—and

who could stay—then no one ever leaves and thus no one can ever return to play

the game again with her.

But this is the burden of being a good guy. I would never say any of that to

her.

The person I need right now is you. And it’s late but it’s not that late.

I pick up Melanda’s phone.

Melanda: You there?

You: Yep. Can’t sleep. How’s the trip? Did you get in safe?

Oh, Mary Kay. You could sleep if you were with me and so could I.

Melanda: Yes and sooooo… okay so I met someone lol

You: Already? You just landed, no?

Melanda: Well… we actually started talking a couple months ago but long distance I

mean I didn’t say anything because who knows but now I’m here and well… NOW I

KNOW lol

You: Wow. Well that’s… great?

Oh, Mary Kay, you are greener by the bubble.

Melanda: lol yes with him right now so gotta scram but yay for meeee!

You: Wow! Details? Tell me he’s not married.

Jesus, you are jealous and as well you should be. You see now that Melanda

took a leap of faith so she gets to be happy and this is how I make you see the

light.

Melanda: Nope! Divorced. Totally free… no offense lol

You: Ha.

I grin. It is a little fun to get under your skin.

Melanda: wow INDEED and he can KISS lol speaking of which… how’s your little

friend?

You: That’s so great M!

You didn’t bite the bait but on a good note, I hear the pain in your voice.

Melanda: I forgot about just kissing someone who like really really really knows

how to kiss lol am sorry I am in seventh grade right now woo hooo lololol

You: Yeah. Nothing like a kiss.

I miss your yeah and do you mean our kiss?

Melanda: You ok with stuff?

You: Yeah. Just trying to get Nomi to do her college essay. Maybe I’ll go back to

college too! When do you find out about the job?

Jesus, Mary Kay. Life moves forward. You went to college. You married Phil.

Get with the program and move on. Don’t pine for the past and don’t make it

all about the future. Be here now and give me your Lemonhead.

Melanda: Haha you could not pay me to go back to school I am so happy right now.

I mean Carl… my interview is tomorrow but I feel really good about it you know?

You: So happy for you M. Seriously.

Seriously. Take it in, Mary Kay. I know that divorce used to seem like a bad

idea, like you’d be at wine bars eight nights a week with Melanda. Squabbling

over horny Shortus types, men you don’t even like, regretting every decision

that led to that barstool. But you met me. It’s time to leave that fucker and be

with me. Carl did it. He left his wife and you can too.

Melanda: Ok seriously back at you ARE YOU OK you can talk about joe. I won’t

yell at you and make fun of his sweater lol I promise

I wait. I watch the screen. Nothing. Nothing at all. And then a minute later:

You: Melanda you don’t have to make a dig at him every time I mention him. I

know you don’t like him. Message received.

Melanda: I’m sorry I’m just like CARL CARL CARL ONLY GOOD MAN ON

EARTH

You: Well that’s great. Can’t wait to meet him if things work out.

If. Ouch! Is that the issue? You want the sure thing over the risk?

Melanda: Oh it’s more like whatever happens, being with him is a game changer you

know? He went through the fire and he left his wife and even if it doesn’t work out I am

just so happy we met you know? That said ok yes we are totally getting married lolol

You: Ha.

You never do the isolated ha and Melanda’s really getting to you. Good.

Melanda: r u mad at me?

You: No. Just feel like shit tonight. And I know. I’m married. I made this mess and I

have a husband but I don’t need a lecture right now so please spare me.

Melanda: Only love you sweetie. And on that note… I know I was hard on Joe.

Mary Kay: Eh. I should probably just forget it. It was just a kiss. A good one. I was

living in a fantasy. Cliché but true, ya know?

I have my answer. You do like the way I kiss and Melanda was right about

one thing. I’m nothing like Phil. I’m better than Phil. And Melanda may not have

come around and seen the light just yet, but I’m in control now and it’s time for

her to be a real friend.

Melanda: No MK. Look pre-Carl I was in man-bashing mode. I can admit that. I

mean you know that…

Mary Kay: I know he wasn’t your favorite…

Melanda: Do me a favor. Give it a chance. I’m not saying to leave Phil and I’m not

saying Joe is anywhere near the man that Carl is… lol gush gush gush… but I just… I

want you to be happy. There’s no law that says you can’t just get to know him I mean

you told him about Phil. Don’t push him away.

Mary Kay: Um who is this and can you send my friend Melanda back

A chill runs through my body. I stare at the phone and fuck you, Steve Jobs

and Mother Nature, because this is the flaw of all communication. Why can’t we

take things back? The pressure is increasing every second and I have to say

something but did I go too far?

Melanda: Oh believe me I’m grossed out too and fully aware that in seven days I

will probably hate Carl and Minnesota lolol

You are typing. Slowly. The dots appear and the dots go away and people

who go to bed early wake up early and I need to finish packing up for Melanda’s

imaginary trip and I need to get the fuck out of here before the joggers awake

and boom.

Mary Kay: I was just kidding. Very happy you’re happy. And yeah… about Joe, we’ll

see.

Oh yes we fucking will, Mary Kay.

It’s Christmas Eve and all day long, I live like a Mothball. I don’t make eye

contact with you unless you address me, which you do twice, both times for

professional reasons. At noon, I go out to the love seat, because I always go out to

the love seat. I know how to take a hint, Mary Kay. “Melanda” told you to give

me a chance, but the last time we spoke, you told me to back off.

The door opens at 12:13 and you’re wearing your coat—you mean to stay—

and you make a sad face at my lunch. “Well, that’s not beef and broccoli.”

“No,” I say. “This is what we call a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

You sit on the love seat. Not close as in Closer. But you’re not shoved against

the armrest. You smile at me. Playful. “Is it okay if I tell you that Nomi likes the

Bukowski you suggested?”

“I think that’s okay. Is it okay if I tell you that I’m really happy you came out

here?”

“Well, I think that’s okay. But I should ask you if it’s okay for me to say that I

was up all night because I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“I think it’s okay for you to say that… as long as it’s okay for me to say that I

was up all night thinking about you too.”

We are on fire and you scratch your messy bun. Red. Gold. You. “Is it okay

for me to say that I thought about you in the shower?”

“Only if it’s okay for me to say that I always think about you in the shower.”

You turn red. “Is it okay for me to say that I’ve been hoping that you do?”

“Only if it’s okay for me to say that I fucked you in my head in every square

foot of this library.”

You glance at me. Did I go too far? You smile. “Is it okay for me to be a little

insulted that you haven’t imagined what we could do right here?”

“I said every square foot of the library, Mary Kay.”

“Yes, but in my head, we’ve been on every square foot of the property.”

Now you went too far and you turn red and I want to hug you but there are

Mothballs inside and there’s an invisible ring on your finger. “See,” you say.

“This is the catch-22. We both know that a lot of this is about the boundary. I

mean who’s to say that all the tension between us isn’t about the boundary? I’m

thinking of both of us here, Joe. Because look at us. Yesterday I was a nervous

wreck about telling you and it turns out you already know… joke’s on me… and

today, ten seconds into it and it’s… Well, my God, our IQs are dropping a

million points a second.”

You’re the one who’s married and I’m the one who’s not and I wouldn’t

respect you, let alone love you, if you weren’t so torn up right now, but it’s time

for me to show off for you the way you showed off for me. “You’re right,” I say.

“And we should probably go back inside.”

You look at me like you were hoping I would kiss you. As if I can fucking do

that. “Is it okay if I say I’m sorry for imploding?”

I stand up. You’re still sitting. At this height, you could unzip me and put me

in your mouth and that’s what you want but you’ve convinced yourself that it’s

all you want when it comes to me. I leave you on the love seat and go back into

the stacks and wait three minutes and text you from Melanda’s phone.

So?

So what?

So did you see Joe yet? Sorry lol I’m in love mode!

You’re spending the rest of your lunch break hiding from me in your office

and you sigh.

Well I just offered to sleep with him in the parking lot. He probably thinks I’m

insane. THIS is insane.

You’re talking yourself out of it and I’m sick of the way you women call out

everything natural and reasonable as insane. But I’m not me. I’m Melanda.

Well maybe you should lol kiddiiiiiiing

You pick up a candy cane on your desk and bite into it. Crunch. Like the rock

hitting Melanda’s head in the woods. And maybe there is a little holiday fucking

magic just for us. Maybe something good will come out of this mess after all.

What if I’m just really horny or what if HE’S just really horny? What if I’m just

building him up in my head. I mean look at Seamus. Nice pig, but a pig. We know men.

Joe is probably too good to be true. You’re the one who said it. No friends. No ties. He

spent Thanksgiving alone and you know what they say. People show you who they are.

I want to storm into your office and dive into your Murakami because sexual

frustration is poisonous.

Sweetie Carl’s here so I have to go but honestly… I was moody that day at the diner.

You like him. He likes you. Deal with it. xoxo love youuuuu

Melanda’s right, Mary Kay. You like me. You do need to fucking deal with it

and I know how to force you to deal with it. There’s a seminar in one of the

glass-walled conference rooms. It’s a setup for disaster—Mothballs teaching

Mothballs how to operate their iPhones—and you forced Nomi to help out but

she’s the only one in there under sixty. She’s not even doing her fucking job,

Mary Kay. She’s holding her phone, forcing one of our patrons to look at her

pictures. “See,” Nomi says. “This is the shed at Fort Ward. The moss on the roof

is like the floor of a forest for Barbies. When I was little I wanted my dad to

steal it.”

I know Phil’s her dad but ugh and the Mothball glares at me and Nomi clocks

me and grunts. “So my mom roped you into this too? Nice. Real nice.”

“Not at all,” I say, rolling up my sleeves and wiping belVita fiber cookie

crumbs into a napkin. “I’m here because I want to be here.”

Nomi makes room for me at the table and Mrs. Elwell remarks on your

Meerkat’s demeanor and I am a pro, defending your daughter without excusing

her behavior—I love to play both sides!—and before you know it, we’re in a

groove. We help Mrs. Elwell “connect” with her family on Facebook—remember

when slide shows were universally acknowledged to be torture?—and Nomi is

softening her approach, learning to be more patient, more like me. She’s not the

fastest learner and she snorts when a Mothball in a sweater set can’t access her

Budussy books. But I catch her eye—Be nice, Nomi—and what can I say, Mary

Kay?

I’m good with kids. I’m selfless. I know my way around a cell phone and I’m

paternal but not patriarchal and you have a front-row seat. You see me and I see

the wheels turning in your head as you remember that I’m not just a good kisser.

I’m a good person. And I don’t rest on my laurels because I had one hit song

twenty years ago—get over yourself, Phil—and when it’s over your Meerkat sighs.

“Well,” she says. “We survived.”

“Oh come on,” I say. “You had some fun. I know I did.”

Nomi won’t admit it—that’s kids—but when I’m packing up to go home, she

cracks a Budussy joke. You see that we bonded—another score!—and I wave.

Friendly Joe! Well-adjusted Joe! “You guys have a great holiday! Gotta go meet

some friends in the city!”

Sure enough, you send a text to Melanda while I’m walking home.

Okay he’s good. It’s like I almost forgot how smart he is because it was so surreal to

be so open with him about the other side of things and… okay. Okay wow. Aahahhahah.

Melanda’s busy with Carl, and she is jealous at heart, so she just likes your

text. And you don’t text again and that’s just as well because I may not have

friends and I may not be unhealthily attached to my family that I secretly hate—

I’m talking to you, my fecal-eyed neighbors—but I do have Melanda in my

basement—and you know what, Mary Kay? I’m actually happy she’s there.

This has never been a good night for me. When I was a kid, I wrote letters to

Santa telling him I’d be a good boy and wait for next Christmas, when things

would be better—ha!—but now the lie of my childhood is true. I have a future

with you and this really is the last shitty Christmas of my life, the darkest hour

before our permanent dawn. I won’t make it worse by giving myself a body to

deal with when everyone else on this rock is opening their fucking presents so I

warm up some fried chicken I had in the freezer and I grab a gallon of ice cream

and head downstairs. She sees me. She smells the chicken. And before I even

ask, she handcuffs herself to the bed and tosses the key at the door. Such a good

dog suddenly, and I enter the Whisper Room and she does a little upper body

ladies’ night kind of dance on her futon.

“Oh honey, I love fried chicken!”

I hand her the tray and she tears skin off the chicken and pops it into her

mouth. “Scrumptious,” she coos, as she licks her fucking fingers. I know what

she’s doing, Mary Kay. She’s playing me. As if she thinks this is the first time I’ve

been cornered into quarantining a dangerous, unstable person in my fucking

personal space. I play right back. “Well, you seem happy.”

“You know what? I actually am happy. And omigod, I really did forget how

much I loooove The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”

“Oh yeah?”

She eats more skin. She licks her fingers. “It does make me kind of sad

though…”

“Oh yeah?”

She tears the lid off the ice cream and digs her fork into the gallon. This is

part of her game. “Yeah,” she says. “I feel like you think Mary Kay is the Bridget

Fonda, the Annabella Sciorra. You buy her barn jacket demeanor and the whole

holier-than-thou good woman thing…” You are a good woman and Melanda

smacks her gums. “Sweetie, you should know that Mary Kay is just… Well, she’s

not what you think.”

Poor Melanda. If only she knew that you and I had a banner day. I tell her to

hold that thought and I go upstairs and make us two mugs of hot cocoa and by

this time next year, I’ll be doing the same thing, making cocoa for you.

Melanda claps when I return to the Whisper Room. “Ooh, yes. I miss carbs so

much.”

You’re allowed to have this one last nuclear holiday with your unchosen

family, same way Melanda is allowed to have a sugar high. The steam turns her

skin red and she purrs like one of my cats. “Mmmm,” she says. “Yummy.”

“So you were saying…”

She puts her mug on the end table and she picks up the remote and pauses

Anything Else and it’s just me, Melanda, and Jason Fucking Biggs. She picks at

the GUN on her shirt. “So I got pregnant in high school.”

I remain calm. I am the fucking key master. “Is this another lie? Because I

know that Mary Kay never said I’m a bad kisser.”

She bats her eyelashes, what’s left of them. “I know,” she says. “I said some

really icky things when I was detoxing…” Always with an excuse. “But you were

right…” Stop trying to mind-fuck me, Melanda. I’m too happy to be stupid.

“And you should know why I was really in the woods the other night.”

I sit in the chair and sip my cocoa. “Well, go ahead.”

“So I was fifteen and I barely knew the guy and I took care of it.”

“Okay.”

“And Mary Kay was amazing, totally there for me, real hard-core best friend

stuff.”

“Well, that’s no surprise.”

She dips a finger into the melted vanilla. “True,” she says. “And I was there a

few years later for her. When she got pregnant.”

“And…”

Melanda flaps her wings. “And she was older. It wasn’t dramatic…” You’re not

a drama queen. A drama queen wouldn’t have been so responsive to all my good

doings in the library today. “And I go to the hospital the day she goes into labor.

I’m in the room with her holding her hand because Phil… well, I mean, he wasn’t

that kind of guy…” There’s one true thing. “So Nomi arrives and she’s beautiful.

Perfect. This feels like our baby, you know? And MK looks at me and goes,

‘Thank you, Melanda. If you hadn’t showed me how hard it was to give up a

pregnancy, I might not have my baby.’ ”

Very well played, because as a man, I can’t say anything. “That’s a lot to take

in.”

“So she put Nomi in my arms. I held that little girl and I was fine with my

decision. I have no regrets. I did the right thing at the right time…” I know the

feeling. “See, I was in the woods that night because Nomi is part mine. Mary Kay

knew what she was doing when she put Nomi in my arms, when she found a

flaw in every guy I ever even tried to date. Yes, I’ve had my moments. Maybe I’m

not the best friend at times…” Ha! “But Mary Kay uses me, Joe. I’ve been the one

looking out for Nomi. In The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Annabella Sciorra

practically lives in that barn jacket. Like Mary Kay in her tights. But that’s the

male director’s gaze for you. In reality, no woman wears that barn jacket every

day. You should know that you’ve put yourself in jeopardy for a woman who

only exists in your head.” She looks at the TV. And then she looks at me. “You

look like him, you know? Jason Biggs. A handsome version, obviously.”

I don’t look like Jason Biggs and she licks her fingers and goes back to

watching her fucking movie and I do not wish her a Merry Christmas. She was

supposed to see what’s wrong with her but instead she’s trying to make me think

there’s something wrong with you.

I go upstairs and I am fuming, trapped, fucked. Ho Fucking Ho and everyone

on this rock is asleep except me and Melanda. I read my stupid horoscope on

one of her astrology apps—no, Joe, no—and I go to Love’s Instagram and watch

Forty open his fucking presents again—no, Joe, no—and I miss my son, my son I

never met and right now the bitch is right.

You really aren’t here with me. You only exist in my head.

But then my phone buzzes. It’s you: Merry Christmas Eve, Joe. Just thinking of

you.

I needed you and you knew it—our connection is like me, it exists—and I

settle into my sofa and my cats gather and romp. I spend the rest of the night

texting with you about Christmas stories and the Bukowski you bought for

Nomi and it’s calming and cozy—you send me a picture of your bare legs, your

fuzzy sock slippers—and our phones are magic. We are magic and we light up

the wee hours of the long, heavy night but eventually you do have to get some

sleep—big day today—and I wish you sweet dreams. I am content. Loved. It’s

almost like your friend Melanda ceases to exist, like Santa Claus finally did me

an overdue solid and schlepped into this house and dragged your friend out of

here, onto his fucking sleigh.

Almost.

It’s the day after Christmas and I’ve been living in a fantasy, texting with you

when you manage to squirrel away from your family. This power imbalance

wouldn’t work with anyone but you, Mary Kay, constantly empathetic—I hope

you don’t mind me only having a minute here and there—and though we don’t say it,

we both know that this is the last holiday we’ll spend apart.

My present to Melanda was giving her exactly what she wanted: no fucking

food. But it’s been almost two days and I don’t want her to starve to death—that

takes too long—so I’m on my way downstairs with a bowl of food—she really is

like my dog—and lucky for me, she’s asleep. No more film school today because

she’ll make up more stories to stay alive. And it’s not entirely her fault for

thinking she has a chance. Last night, I told you about how I gave the fecal-eyed

family a wreath and you said I’m too nice for my own damn good. And you’re

right, Mary Kay.

I am. But I’m also a fucking procrastinator. I know I have to kill Melanda.

But I just keep putting it off.

It’s not just me, Mary Kay. Most “normal” people in America are in the same

boat right now, torn between wanting to save the people they’re stuck with and

wanting to fucking kill them. I don’t know if her story about you is true, but I

know that I don’t care. So what if you had a callous moment in the delivery

room? You had just created a child with Phil. We’re animals. Animals eat other

animals alive. That’s the way the system is designed. And so what if you

manipulated Melanda into being your unofficial co-parent? You were stuck

with Phil and mothers do crazy shit. Love lets my son chew on Christmas lights

—I don’t even let my cats do that—and the fact is, motherhood is the hardest

job in the world. I love the person you are now, Mary Kay—you wished me a

Merry Christmas, you wished me a Merry Christmas—and if someone from my past

attacked you, well, you might hear things about me that would put you off.

I’m a lot of things, Mary Kay, but I’m not a hypocrite.

I’m on my way to the library when Melanda’s phone pings in my pocket.

Christmas wasn’t the same without you. Hope you had fun with Carl! Would love to

see pics!

LOL no pics cuz his kids were with his wife and we were pretty much naked the

whole time bwaahahahahha

Well that’s great. I can’t stop thinking about Joe… We’re talking nonstop like

teenagers.

I pump my fist. Well, not really, but I want to.

Sweetie don’t think. Just do! Lol love you! Hope you guys had a fun holiday too!

There’s a big difference between telling someone that you hope they had fun

and asking if they had a good time. You know it too, and you don’t write back

to Melanda. Good. You’re right. We have been texting like teenagers and we’re not

in high school and it’s time for you to step up and make room for me. I get to

the library before you and I am shelving Richard Scarrys by the Red Bed when I

hear your voice.

“Hey,” you say, and what a rush, to finally hear your voice out loud in person,

to see your face. You murmur now, as if things changed for us over the past few

days, because they did change. “I am… I have a little something for you.”

You’re holding a white box and there is a red ribbon wrapped around the

white box and you motion toward the door and I follow you outside, where it is

gray. Drab. As if January can’t fucking wait to get here. We didn’t go more than

two hours and twelve minutes without talking over the last five days but now

we sit on our love seat like strangers on a bus.

You hold your box. “Is this weird?”

“Only if there’s a bomb inside.”

You laugh. I always make you laugh. “Yeah… I got you a little something…”

Because we bonded over Christmas. “You were so great with Nomi the other day

and that meant a lot to me.”

“Well, that was nice of you.”

You nod. You’re still married and you feel guilty, which is why you can’t

speak the truth and I get it. We’re at work. We have to pretend the last few days

never happened, not because someone might be eavesdropping—we’re alone out

here—but because you too are procrastinating. You look down at the box that

sits on your lap. A corduroy skirt today. Black tights.

“So how was it? How was Christmas with the family?”

You look at me—you can’t fucking believe how good I am—and you crack a

smile. “Well, it was our first Christmas without Melanda. So we didn’t have a

buffer.”

You really do believe it’s her texting you and I smile. “And how was that?”

You rub the ribbon on my box, my box that is your box. “I don’t know why

I’m telling you this. It doesn’t feel fair.”

“We’re just talking. And I do care about you. You know that.”

“Yeah,” you say. “I guess it’s that thing where even when someone is like

family, which Melanda really is, well it’s still company. So you dress up a little,

you know? You have a guest. And it was different without her. There was this

moment, after we ate. Phil…” You gulp. “My husband’s playing his guitar,

blasting his music, and Nomi’s wearing her headphones and reading her

Columbine and I almost…” Got in the car to come see me. “Well, open your

present already.”

You hand me the box and a car passes by and the windows are down and

Sam Cooke serenades us—Darling you send me, honest you do—and Love sent me

away but you send me and I send you. You nudge me. “Well come on. Open it.”

I pull the ribbon and I open your box—if only—and I count six red

strawberries, all of them doused in chocolate and I bet Phil didn’t get any

fucking strawberries. I look at you. “I wish I had something for you.”

Your cheeks are flushed and your eyes are glued to me and you missed me.

“Yeah,” you say. “I wish a lot of things lately…”

I want your Murakami and I want your Lemonhead and we both stare at our

tree. “I don’t want to be selfish, Joe.”

“You’re not being selfish.”

“Well, that’s not what Phil says…”

I can’t be the one you talk to about the rat and you’re the one who made the

rules. I nod.

“See, Joe, I think Melanda’s mad at me. I think that’s why she blew me off at

Christmas.”

I can’t talk about this either and my heart is pounding. Melanda. “Why do you

say that?”

“It’s ancient history, but in high school… God, I’m too old to start stories

with that sentence… Anyway, when we became friends, she told me that all

these people like your neighbor Nancy… Well, she told me they hated me. And

then one day I go into the bathroom, and I overhear her telling Nancy that I

hate Nancy.”

So that’s why you stole her rat and that’s why you weren’t exactly sensitive

about her pregnancy when you got pregnant. And you don’t know she’s in my

basement. You really don’t. Do you? “You never told her you overheard her?”

You shake your head. “It’s weird to miss her and yet not miss her, you know?

She might not even come back for a few months…” I know. “Melanda” texted

you that. “She’s gonna start this new job. She met this new guy… I’m not so good

with change. And it’s strange to feel almost jilted, as if I was being ‘possessive’ or

something when I know I should just be happy for her and I know we were both

dragging each other down. But it stings in some weird way, to feel… left.”

RIP Beck… RIP Candace… Love. I nod. “It is,” I say. “But ultimately, the

distance gets you to a more honest place, you know?”

You’re contemplative. You need me because I’m the first person in your life

that really fucking listens. I give you the silence you’ve been craving and you

want me so much that you’re shaking. “Come on,” you say. “It’s getting cold.”

You open the door—you’re not cold, you’re hot, hot for me—and you look at

the Red Bed and I look at the Red Bed and you blush. “Have a good rest of the

day!”

I have a great rest of the day because of you. You love me and I oughta buy

Melanda some chocolate-covered strawberries—ha!—because look what she did

for you, for me, for us—and I carry your box under the crook of my arm and

Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me” is on repeat in my head and the world would be a

happier place if more people would lift their souls with music instead of ugh-

inducing podcasts. I make it into town and I take off my headphones and there

is music in the café today—Bob Dylan in Pegasus—and there really is revolution

in the air, strawberries in my hands. I get the chills.

We were tangled up in Phil’s blues and you were married when we met but

you gave me a gift and you are soon to be divorced and I’m helping you out of the

jam that is your bad, blue life. I’m saving you! It’s almost like you knew about my

situation with Melanda, and now I don’t have to feel bad about it because you

don’t want things to go back to normal.

Why would you? You have me.

I open my box and look down on my six, Red Bed red strawberries,

Murakamis cloaked in chocolate. I reach my hand into your box that is my box

but some asshole body slams me. The box goes flying and the Adidas–sneakered

ass who did this mad-dogs me like I did something wrong.

“Dude,” I say. I am so mad I’m saying dude. “What the fuck?”

He doesn’t speak or move and I don’t like this, Mary Kay. I don’t like him.

“Sorry,” he says. “Small sidewalk… small world, too, my friend.”

I am not his friend and he’s not one of us. He doesn’t live here. I can just tell. I

step toward him—this is my town—and he shakes his head slowly, like a B

movie gangster, as if someone wearing Adidas sneakers and a battered old long-

sleeve T-shirt—SOMETHING BOATHOUSE—could ever be remotely intimidating.

A kid on a skateboard runs over one of my strawberries and the man who

knocked the strawberries onto the sidewalk steps forward. “Nice gift,” he says.

“Nothing says forever like a fruit box. You really know how to pick ’em,

Goldberg.”

The sky falls down. He said my name.

Is he a cop? Is this about my dog back home?

I give nothing. I say nothing. I know nothing and he laughs. “Calm down,” he

says. “They never taste as good as they look, do they, Goldberg?” I could punch

his lights out right now. I make a fist. “All right,” he says. “I know you have a

temper…” No I fucking don’t, not anymore. “So I’ll cut to the chase. I’m just here

with a message from our friends the Quinns.”

The Quinns? Love’s family? No. It’s a new year. A new life. “Who are you?”

“It’s pretty simple, Goldberg. Stay away from Love. Stay away from Forty.”

“I don’t know who you are, but obviously you’re ill-informed because I have

stayed away.”

“Oh, Goldberg,” he says. “Mind your Instagram activities or you’re gonna

wind up like your little strawberries. Capiche?”

I looked at Love’s stories because IT WAS FUCKING CHRISTMAS AND

SHE STOLE MY SON AND YOU TELL ME HOW TO NOT LOOK AT

YOUR OWN FUCKING SON and I ask him who sent him and he chuckles.

I pick up my empty box. “Well, you stay the fuck away from me. And my

family.”

He steps in front of me. “I wouldn’t talk that way to me if I were you, Joe.”

“You walk up here. You start shit with me and I don’t know who the hell you

are and you talk about my family.”

The motherfucker snorts. “ ‘Family,’ ” he says. “Well, that’s one word for it, my

friend.”

“Who are you?”

“Look, you’re not a member of the Quinn family, Goldberg. See, I work for

the Quinn family. I’m here on behalf of the Quinn family. Think of me as your

co-worker.”

“But I don’t work for the Quinns.”

“Huh,” he says. “How’d ya pay for your house?”

I don’t answer the question because he knows the goddamn answer and he

laughs. Pig. Snob. “See,” he says. “The difference between you and me is that the

family is on my side, not yours. Understood? So, stop stalking your ex, my

friend, and stay offline. Because if you don’t stop…”

He smashes a strawberry with his shoe and looks at me. “Got it?”

He flips his hat around and walks away and I let him. I have no fucking

choice.

I can’t get those mutilated, bleeding strawberries out of my mind—What else

does the Strawberry Killer know?—and Melanda is doing jumping jacks and

what the fuck happened? I was with you and you were with me and now your

strawberries are gone—I didn’t get to eat one—and Melanda never ate the food I

brought her. She claims she’s still fasting her body and her soul and that’s a lie.

There’s nothing spiritual about her fucking hunger strike—she just wants to be

thinner than you—and I don’t want her to be here.

But she is.

And she’s different, Mary Kay. She just finished The Anjelica Huston Story

(a.k.a. Crimes and Misdemeanors), and she’s high on endorphins, sounding off on

Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle—Who wouldn’t go nuts

working for a barn jacket mommy who gets to be married to the nicest man on the

planet?—and she takes a punch at Single White Female—Who wouldn’t go crazy

shacking up with Bridget Fonda and her stupid swan neck?

She won’t stop talking and I can’t stop thinking about the Strawberry Killer

and why is every fucking person lining up to get in our way? Finally, she stops

jumping and sighs. “You were so right about Beaches, Joe.”

“I’m gonna go back upstairs. You seem okay for now.”

“Wait,” she says. “I mean it. You were right, Joe. You were right about a lot.”

Sorry, Melanda, I’m not some dumb asshole who gets off on a woman telling

him he’s right. “See,” she says. “I don’t cry when Barbara Hershey dies. You want

to know why?”

I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. “Why?”

“Because she deserved to die, Joe. She stole her roommate’s boyfriend.” She

touches her toes and rises, Jane Fucking Fonda, and now she’s jumping again.

Clap. Swish. Clap. “I want to go to Minnesota, Joe. I’m ready.” This should be

good news. She wants out and I want her out—LIFE IS SUPPOSED TO BE

EASY WHEN PEOPLE WANT THE SAME FUCKING THING—but she’s

here. She knows things. She jumps and she jacks and she pushes. “I’m tired of this

island, where women are expected to go around forgiving the women who shit

all over them. Right now, I just want to forgive you, Joe.” She stops jumping and

takes her pulse and her poor parents, no wonder they died early. “And I promise

you, Joe, I will never breathe a word of any of this to anyone…” She’s saying my

name way too much. “You helped me. And I’m ready to move on.” She flops

onto the futon with a “Woof, I’m dizzy” and she picks up the gallon of water and

drinks directly from it even though there’s a plastic cup on the nightstand. She’s

relaxed and I’m tense, riddled with Silverstein’s Whatifs—What if someone saw

me with the Strawberry Killer? What if you see your strawberries mashed on the

pavement?—and why didn’t I scrape up that mess and what am I gonna do

about this mess?

“I fucked him,” she says. “I fucked Phil.”

“In high school. I know.”

“No, Joe. I’m talking about a few weeks ago, when MK was outta town. Go

back to my condo. I dare you. I am so behind on laundry so you can take my

panties to a lab. They’ll find Phil’s DNA, I promise you.”

Another story, no doubt. I want your panties not her panties and I take her

phone out of my pocket and she laughs. “Oh come on,” she says. “I’m a teacher. I

don’t sext with him. It’s an affair. You just have to trust me…” She rubs her calf,

as if she’s pretending her hand belongs to a man, to your fucking rat.

“Remember when Jennifer Jason Leigh mounted Bridget Fonda’s boyfriend in

Single White Female? It’s kinda like that. We are talking a ton of blow jobs.”

She drinks directly from her jug.

“Melanda, this doesn’t matter.”

“Wrong,” she says. “This changes everything. Now you know my dirty secret.

You can let me go because I don’t want Mary Kay to find out about me and Phil.

And you don’t want her to find out about you and me.”

I don’t want there to be a me and Melanda—why can’t your friends be normal?

—and she crosses her legs. “You don’t believe me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So, it started after my thirtieth birthday, not the best time in my life, as you

might imagine… MK wanted to throw me a surprise party, but you know how it

is…” What the hell would I know about surprise parties and would you

recognize your strawberries if you saw them on the sidewalk? “I told her no, but

she insisted. So I got all dressed up, figured we’d be at the pub, maybe

somewhere in Lynwood…” Oh, Melanda, learn how to tell a story and oh, Mary

Kay, I am sorry about your fruit. “But then MK picks me up. She drives us to her

house…”

Is she making this up as she goes along? “Can you just get to the point?”

She twirls her hair. “Go on my Facebook. Look at the pictures. It wasn’t a

party for me, Joe. It was a fuck-you to me. All families. All kids and babies and

it’s not like I don’t like kids and babies, but come on. I’m thirty years old and I

don’t even have a boyfriend and Phil was supposed to bring this guy from his

band who seemed decent and he’s not there and I’m literally the only person at

my birthday party who doesn’t have a husband or a kid.”

I dig up the pictures on her fucking Facebook and I see you. I see all the

children, but like most pictures, these don’t tell the whole story. Melanda curls

up like a college kid in an emotional circle jerk. She says she got drunk and

passed out on your sofa before the party ended.

“I woke up… I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know what year it was. You

know that kind of drunk?” No. “That dirty thirty kind of drunk…” She’s Bridget

Jones now, she’s fucking British. “Anywho, Phil comes downstairs.” She gulps, in

a way that makes her story seem legitimate. “He whipped it out. I could have

told him to bugger off. But I was just so mad at MK. I wanted to suck his cock,

Joe…” Bridget didn’t talk like that. Too crass. “And I wanted to do that because

of what she did to me with that pretend party. So I did it.” She arches her back,

a mix of pride and shame and joy and you deserve better, Mary Kay. “And that’s

that. Our ten-year anniversary is coming up and I do not want to be here to

‘celebrate’ it. I also don’t want to be forced to come back here for some stupid

court hearing about all this… so this is where we are.”

“You expect me to believe that Mary Kay has no idea about you and Phil…”

“I’m a very good liar, Joe. You of all people should know that.”

I shove her phone in my pocket. “This has nothing to do with our situation.”

“Are you kidding? Don’t you get it? I want out. I hate the person I’ve become.

I hate that I slowly, unconsciously settled for this man just because he calls me

Ruby and I hate that I became someone who got off on pulling one over on my

best friend. I hate my condo. I hate my job. I hate my noisy fridge and I hate the

guilt and I hate that I’m actually happy I missed Christmas because it meant that

I didn’t have to sit in their house like some overgrown orphan and go home and

gorge on Hostess Cupcakes while I sit on my couch just hating myself. I swear to

you, you are in the clear because I want to be in the clear. I want out.”

I see your strawberries on the sidewalk. I see the rain washing them away.

“Okay,” she says. “You don’t believe me. You need details…” No, Mary Kay.

No. “So, a few years ago he got this day job… I mean the man does not belong at

a desk…” She says that like it’s a good thing. “I would sneak out of school at

lunch and park a block away and go into his office and… you know. He said he

couldn’t live without me and it’s terrible, but it was so exciting, sneaking

around, sucking him off, and going back to teach all the kids about Zora Neale

Hurston.” She’s waving her arms as if this weight has finally been lifted and it all

feels real but she might be faking it. She has been studying some of the world’s

most phenomenal actresses and you’re a fox. You would know if your best friend

and your husband were boning. Foxes see things. “I don’t know, Melanda…”

“Oh, come on,” she says. “Barn jacket Goody Two-shoes wives are always

blind. These past few days… Being away from my life… well now I get it. Phil’s

married to MK. You’re in love with MK. That’s the story of my life here. And

here’s the kicker…” The long dramatic pause and I am the Bonnie Hunt to her

Zellweger in Jerry Fucking Maguire. “You’re right, Joe. I’m not a woman

supporting women. I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.”

She takes a stage breath and I feel played. “Melanda, I think you need to eat

something.”

“You’re judging me. And you’re allowed. I was dumb like Anjelica Huston.

Who knows? Maybe I’m too romantic…” Oh, for fuck’s sake. “And yes, Joe, yes, I

have dreamed about Mary Kay catching a rare heart disease or a fast-moving

cancer but that was only because I wanted Phil to be free.” She rubs her eyes.

“And now I’m just… tired. Now I just want out.”

I picture her in Charlize Theron’s apartment in Young Adult, drunk and

alone, calling you up in the middle of the night and telling you what I did to her

as she underplays what she did to me and I knock on the glass and she sighs, ever

the condescending teacher and she says she hears me. “Look at it this way. If

there’s one thing you can be sure about, well, I know how to keep a secret. I

never gave Phil an ultimatum. I never threatened to tell MK. And I don’t want

to hurt her anymore. And this time around… this is a secret that I would hold

on to because I don’t want her to know. I’ve done enough damage to them.”

“You’re not the one who’s married, Melanda. He took advantage of you.”

She looks me right in the eye. “No, Joe. I took advantage of them.”

She kicks the wall with her bare foot and now she’s rubbing her foot and she

reminds me of my son, always banging himself on the head, his mother begging

her Instagram audience of cunts for advice. How do I get my little boy to stop

beating himself up? Do I put him in a helmet?

I tell her this is a very creative story and she accuses me of saying she’s not hot

enough for Phil because she doesn’t prance around in miniskirts like you and I tell

her she’s twisting my words and she tugs at the GUN on her T-shirt. “Did you

read that book The Beloveds?”

“The Maureen Lindley? No, I haven’t read it yet.”

Her face is the reason people like RIP Benji lie about reading books and her

eyes fill with judgment. Thick, ugly snobbery. “Well, it’s this theory. Some

people get to be loved and some people don’t.”

“That’s a crock of shit. You just said that Phil ‘loves’ you. So which is it?”

“You’re a kidnapper. I’m a husband fucker. Let’s agree that we’re not model

citizens. You want in, I want out.” She makes it all sound so simple, Mary Kay,

like a bizarro-world Pacific Northwest fairy tale where it’s happy endings all

around. But that’s what teachers do. They simplify things. She rubs her eyes.

“Well, if you won’t put me on a plane right now, can you please bring the TV in

here? I have such a migraine.”

I’m tired too, Mary Kay. And I can’t deal with her remains, not with the

fucking Strawberry Killer out there. I’m a nice guy, and she’s starting to cry, so I

bring the TV into her room. She rolls over and picks up the remote. “Thank

you,” she says. “And if it’s not too much… I’d love a nice big fast-breaking last

supper. Steak or salmon. Or even chicken.”

“It’s not your last supper, Melanda.”

She cues up the third and last Bridget Jones movie. “Can you just let me

watch in peace?”

I leave her to be loved vicariously through Bridget Fucking Jones and there

are moments when I want her to be happy. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she really

does want a fresh start. I imagine a world where you and I are living together.

Phil is gone, finding new women to suck on his Philstick and Melanda calls you

once a week from her new life in Minnesota. She never tells you about that

night in the woods and you never find out that she betrayed you. We take our

secrets to the grave and people do that. I want to do that because I want to be

the man who fixed your life. Not the man who killed your best friend.

But then I remember her Sorel boot in my ribs. I remember how the corners

of her Carly Simon mouth turned up as I left her just now. I can’t fucking trust

her, Mary Kay. I have to fact-check her soap opera saga so I throw a salmon on

the grill. I pop a steak in the oven—Nice Joe! Chef Joe!—and I play the Sacriphil

songs from the year Melanda turned thirty. It’s no use, Mary Kay. This is a

concept album about a day in the life of a ghost—oh, Phil, you should have quit

after your Shark—and I turn off the fucking “music” and text Phil from my

burner phone: Hey, you around?

A good five minutes later my man Phil responds: Hell yeah Joe!

I step on Riffic’s tail and he hisses and my veins shrink up on me. Phil called

me Joe. To him I’m Jay. Does he know? Am I fucked? Ten seconds later: I mean

Jay. Sorry man!

Fucking prick.

I write back: Question. Banging the girlfriend’s best friend. Am I going to hell for

that, or is that kinda shit good for the music?

Phil responds with an all caps warning—FOR YOUR EYES ONLY,

HAVEN’T LAID DOWN THIS TRACK YET—and a page of his notepad. The

title of the song is “A Diamond for You, A Ruby for Me” and I scan the lyrics

and he’s mining rubies at Fort Ward and Jesus, Mary Kay. It’s true. Her story

wasn’t “creative” and sometimes truth really is more repugnant and useful than

fiction.

I’m mad for you and I’m sad for you. Of all the places they could have gone,

Fort Fucking Ward. The salmon is sizzling and the fat in the meat is bubbling

and Melanda is right. She knows my secret and I know hers. Could I do it, Mary

Kay? Could I let your best friend go?

I never wanted to kill her—I don’t want to kill anyone—and okay. It’s insane

to imagine her walking up the stairs, going to an airport, and starting over. But

once upon a time, it was insane to imagine a woman like you walking into my

life and I want to do right by you.

I placate your lying, cheating rat with all the caps I can manage—YOU ARE

THE KING—and I put Sam Cooke on repeat to sanitize my eardrums.

And then my doorbell rings.

That’s not a thing my doorbell does and is it the Strawberry Killer? Is it Phil?

Did he somehow find out where I live? I don’t like the sound of my doorbell and

there it goes again and now there is knocking and what if the rat found out my

address and now it’s the doorbell and the fists pounding on the door and my

skin crawls.

I don’t look in the peephole and I don’t run. My hand sweats as I grip the

doorknob.

And there you are.

You are wet—it started raining—and feral—you barge into my house.

Your hair is dripping on your blouse and your blouse is soaked—I see the

outline of your bra—and you pace around in my living room—did I close the

door to the basement?—and you are quiet. Wordless and airtight, like my

Whisper Room, and do you know about Melanda? Do you know about Jay? I

never should have knocked out Melanda and brought her home. I should have

let her try and ruin my name—A Girl Is a Gun—because you would have come to

my defense. You would have told her she was wrong. But I let my fear get the

best of me and you drop onto my red sofa and you look at me like I’m a cheater.

You point at my big red chair. “Sit,” you say, as if I’m a dog. “Sit.”

You don’t speak to me. You pull your shirt over your head and it feels like

the first time I ever jerked off—Blanche DuBois, I love you forever—and it

reminds me of the first real-life woman I saw naked—my mother fell in the

shower, there was hair down there, there were breasts up there—and the first

time I had sex—Mrs. Monica Fonseca—and it’s Sam Cooke in that passing car,

it’s the Eagles on a summer night when even people who get off on hating the

Eagles have to kind of love them.

You didn’t come to arrest me and you don’t know how hard I’ve worked for

this but here you are, dropping your skirt, peeling off your tights—Oh God, Joe.

Oh God—and your Murakami is so close I can smell it and you sit on the sofa

and I start to stand and you order me to sit and you stare at my pants so I unzip

them and is that okay? Yes, that’s okay.

Your eyes are on the road and your hands are on the wheel and we are going

to the fucking roadhouse in our own way and your nipples pop for me—Oh God,

Joe. Oh God—and the pages of your book were stuck together. Sealed off like

your legs below your tights but look at you now. Unglued. Slick. Oh God, Joe. Oh

Joe. You are inside of you, but you are there because of me.

I move again. I want to be Closer and again you shoo me off. Sit.

You won’t let me in today—you’re still married—but I am inside of you,

inside of your mind—and you came here to teach me and I am your pupil and

I’m a fast learner—This finger goes there. The thumb belongs here—and your knees

buckle and your toes curl and you finish first—Sisters before Misters—and you roll

up in a ball and hide your face in a red pillow. You know I’m getting close and

you peek and your eyes are just above the red pillow and I finish because of your

eyes.

You sigh. “Oh God, Joe.”

Again we don’t speak. We don’t move. Our bodies hum. The air is musty

with our sweat, our fluids. Do I hug you? Do I high-five you? I know you so well

but I don’t know you naked and you came here, in more ways than one, and are

you grossed out? Am I becoming an anecdote in your head—So this one time I

showed up at this guy’s house and touched myself while he jacked off, I mean that’s how

you know it’s time for couples counseling—and the serotonin is crashing. What do I

say to you? What do I do? Do I bring you water? Do I feed you?

And then you laugh. “Okay, I’m a little embarrassed.”

“Don’t be. That was very hot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You’re a fox and foxes need to move so you pick up your tights and you tell

me you’ve never done anything like this—you think you have to say that—and I

walk across the room. I take your tights in my hands. I breathe in the white

cotton center, the part that breathes you in, day in, day out. I am a gentleman.

You want your clothes so I hand over your tights and you laugh.

“This is just never an elegant activity, putting on tights.”

I run my hand up the back of your leg. “Agree to disagree.”

You pull away and I take my hand off your leg. You pull up your tights and

you fix your bun. “Huh,” you say. “I didn’t know you play guitar.”

“A little.” I should have hidden that fucking Philstick. “But not in a serious

way. I have an oboe too. And a flute.”

You smile. “And you play them all at once, right?”

We’re smiling again and I got us out of the jam. I bring you down to the red

sofa, the Red Bed. We are spooning. We are one. Your voice is small, scared. “I

don’t know what to say right now.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

Silence falls on us like Guterson’s snow falling on cedars. We are learning

what it feels like to be alone in private. You feel what I feel. Warm. Safe.

I shouldn’t tell you this but you’re here. You came. “So the day after we first

talked on the phone, before I started working at the library… I bought a

cashmere sweater.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t know it in the moment, but I got home and put it on

and realized it… it felt like you.”

“I think you’re aware that I like that sweater.”

Licious saunters into the room and you light up. “Oh God,” you gasp.

“Licious is even cuter in person. Come here, baby.”

Licious leaves the room—fucking cats—and you nestle into my chest and I

kiss your head. “All of our cats are cute.”

You stroke my chest. “I like the way you say that. Our cats.”

We could be teenagers on a beach in the nineties and we could be in the

hospital beds in our nineties and there’s something old about us together,

something young. And then you pat my hand. “Joe, I should probably go.”

I hold you. “You should probably not say ‘should probably’ so much.”

I get an F in pillow talk and you’re wiggling away, you’re on your feet and

you’re putting on your skirt and what do I say to make you stay? You pull on

one boot and then you reach for the other and then you flinch. “What was that

noise?”

The Whisper Room is almost soundproof and it better not be my dog. “I

think I have a mouse.”

“Well, don’t worry. Riffic will take care of that. He’s the toughest one in the

bunch.”

You are fully dressed by now and I’m still lying on the couch, a big spoon

with no little spoon underneath and I can’t read your face. Is that guilt? Regret?

You mumble something about humane mousetraps like we’re in a fucking

Facebook group chat about exterminators and I nod, like I give a shit about

mice right now.

I stand up. Do I touch you? Do I hug you? “Do you want something to eat?”

You shudder and tell me again that you should probably go and then you laugh

because of what I said about your should probablies and I should probably build a

time machine because I ruined it. The afterglow.

“See, Joe, this is the problem.” You open the door and you open your mouth

and you look at me and you look away and just say it, Mary Kay. “You should

probably stop being so perfect… I’ll um… I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Soon.”

Tastic creeps up on us and rubs against your leg and you pick him up and

coo. “Oh God, Tastic, you are the cutest, you are! You are my perfect little baby,

yes you are.”

You’re wrong—Tastic is the neediest and Riffic is the cutest—but I don’t

question your judgment and you go before I say something stupid and YES! You

called me “perfect” and that’s what I’m going to be from now on. If I were your

cat, my name would be Perfect.

When you’re gone, I lean my head against the door. I want you to pound on

the other side and beg for more, but that’s not gonna happen. Perfect men aren’t

greedy. They’re grateful. I go into the kitchen and I like the idea of us in split

screen, opening cabinets and going through the motions as we replay every

nanosecond of our first (almost) time. I put the overcooked salmon and the

blackened steak onto a plate. I get the Heinz ketchup. I grab a couple Hostess

Cupcakes and the tray is ready.

I glance at my red sofa. You were there. You’ll be there again.

I open the basement door. The tray is heavy and each step is a challenge. But

at the same time I have no fear of falling. I’m not walking. I’m floating. Perfect.

But then I make it to the bottom of the stairs and I stop short. Something is

wrong. The room is silent. Lifeless.

And then I see her. Melanda’s facedown on the floor of the Whisper Room.

There’s blood on the floor, on the glass wall, and the TV is down too. Shattered.

I drop my tray and I scream her name. “Melanda!”

I grope for my keys and I’m in the Whisper Room on my knees and I’m too

late. She used the television set and there is blood, so much blood, and I grab her

shoulders and I whisper. I hope. “Melanda, can you hear me?”

But her heart is silent—I am wasting my time—and that’s when I realize the

blood on the wall isn’t spatter. It’s writing. She used her own blood as ink.

Finger paint. Her last words, her goodbye:

Single White Female.

This isn’t a misdemeanor. This is a crime and Melanda’s the shark inside my shark,

the body in my house and it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. If you hadn’t

come over tonight…

No. This isn’t your fault. She did this. Not you. Not me. Melanda.

I can’t let my empathy get the best of me right now. She chose to end her life

on my property and she left me to do the dirty work, to clean up the mess. I turn

off the security cameras and delete my files—I don’t like snuff films—and if

some twisted voyeur techie already saw what she did, well that’s the point, isn’t

it?

She did it. Not me.

She will never be coming around again and as it all sinks in, well, in some ways

I could kill her for what she did to us. Her blood is on my fingertips, it’s on the

walls of my Whisper Room and she was in this room because she attacked me. I

grab her phone. I can’t call 911. I can’t trust the Injustice System—if only you

knew—and I can’t bury her in my yard. Fecal-Eyed Nancy is a nosy Nextdoor

app–addicted gossip and I crack a smile. Is there something wrong with me? No.

Laughing at funerals is a common phenomenon. We laugh at death because we

have to, because what is more ironic than being stuck with a very smart,

opinionated woman who can’t weigh in with her thoughts at a moment when I

could really use her fucking help?

I could take her to the dock and let her sink to the floor of the bay, but the

tide gets low. I could put her in the trunk and drive to the footbridge by 305 but

I like that footbridge. I could dump her in Murden Cove—the smell is bad

enough there as it is—but once again with the low fucking tide… For her it was

easy—Single White Female—but this is hell on me and unlike that daytime-soap-

loving sociopath in Fargo, I don’t have access to a wood chipper. And why would

I fucking want a wood chipper? It’s not like things worked out for him and we

all know how it ends—chills—and I will not end up in the back of a fucking

police cruiser.

Goddammit, Melanda, why me? Why my house? I know she had her reasons.

I’ve read the phone—I had to know everything about you—and I read her

journals—I had to know everything she won’t put in the phone. I know that as

recently as two weeks ago she was sick about never having had a baby.

I want to have one but then I go into Blackbird and those mommies are so smug as if

giving birth makes them more of a woman than me and they’re so BORING and they

think they’re so INTERESTING and how can I want to be one of them? UGH MK is

lucky she did it early before all these women turned into martyrs and HELLO they have

husbands and ok so the husbands don’t unload the dishwasher unless they’re asked to do

it but they do it, you know? MK is lucky and I’m not lol I know. Get over it! Sigh.

But she didn’t get over it and now look what she did to us. Single White

Female.

It’s hard to be alone, I know. We all need to let it out. But she listened to

that Carly Simon song about the hardships of relationships almost nine thousand

times and did any of it sink in? That song is about crimes and misdemeanors.

You break a window, you burn a soufflé, but you don’t break yourself. You get a

new shrink. You move. Seattle’s right there and isn’t that what you all think is so

great about this island? You walk onto the ferry and into the city and find

Frasier for fuck’s sake, or even Niles, but don’t do this. Don’t leave the planet

and don’t go in Blackbird when you damn well know there will be fecal-eyed

mommies in there wearing their babies in a circle jerk.

I’m sad for Melanda—she just couldn’t come around—and I am sad for me.

What do I do with her now?

I’m frozen—the Seattle freeze is officially real—and I can’t bring her to her

house. I can’t allow headlines in The Bainbridge Island Review—LOCAL FEMINIST

SLITS WRISTS—because headlines will lead to investigations and whispers. You

are all that matters and you can never know that she ended her life. Same way

you can never know that she was down here while we were up there and I wish

Melanda had never attacked me in the woods. I wish she’d moved to Minnesota

years ago, when the time was right.

I roll her body onto a duvet and I wrap her up like a burrito and it helps. I

don’t have to look at her corpse anymore. But then my eyes land on her bare feet

—nothing stays the same—and oh, Melanda, why?

I take out her phone. She left me with no choice, Mary Kay. I have to make

you despise her. I have to burn the bridge and tell you what you shouldn’t have

to know so that you never want to speak to her ever again. She’s been your best

friend for a long time. You didn’t fight over Phil. You remained close as sisters,

jumping off the pier at Point White, spending Mother’s Day together, sharing

your daughter, the way you unknowingly shared your husband.

I close my eyes. I picture Melanda falling in love with Imaginary Carl. It’s

new for her. She tells him everything and he tells her that she has to end this

toxic friendship. You stole her boyfriend and you were young—I know—but at

some point we all have to own up to our past mistakes. People do this when

they fall in love, when they think they finally found their person. I did that with

Love. I told her everything about me. And now Melanda’s going to reach into

the bottom of her oversized broken heart.

Me as Melanda:

Sweetie this isn’t easy for me and it isn’t going to be easy for you but that’s part

of the problem. Life is easy for you. You breeze into things. Phil wanted you the

second he saw you and I said it was ok because what could I do? He didn’t feel

that way about me. He felt that way about you. You can’t make anyone love you.

I know that.